No Sealey Challenge for Me--But a Different Daily Poetry Challenge?

For one brief moment yesterday morning, I thought about doing the Sealey Challenge:  reading 1 volume of poetry each day in August.  I've only done it once in the past, so yesterday morning, I went back and read the blog posts that I wrote in 2020; this post talks about the overall experience, and this one talks about photos I used when making my Facebook posts.  Some people have posted their daily experiences on Instagram, but I'm not on Instagram.  Did I post on Twitter in 2020?  I was on Twitter, so probably.

I even went so far as to gather all the single volumes of poetry that I have on my bookshelves here at the house (I have even more in boxes and a few volumes at my office on campus).  But by afternoon, I decided not to do it.

I was able to do it in 2020 because my work life was so different.  I was in an office every day for 8-ish hours a day, but I had long patches of time during the day when I didn't have tasks to do.  At that point, we thought it was likely that the campus would close at some point in the next year, so my main work job was to keep it going, in a hospice kind of way, keeping everyone comfortable, but not starting new initiatives.

It was 2020, early-ish in the Covid time, no vaccines, and trying to stay distanced.  So I had fewer people coming to my office to complain or to strategize or to fight off boredom by gossiping or rage baiting.  In short, I had a lot of free time, even though I had to spend it in an office.

During those no-task times in 2020, I was able to read a book straight through.  My work life is about to get a lot more complicated, with commuting and going to class and one set of online classes coming to an end and another set beginning.

But yesterday's thinking about the Sealey Challenge did remind me that I want to start reading more poetry again.  I want to carry a volume of poetry with me throughout my teaching day.  I want to model the behavior of reading in the moments of down time that come with every class.

And that has made me think of something else--maybe I want to project a poem onto the board at the start of each class--a different type of daily poetry challenge!  Maybe I want poems each day that encourage students.  Hmmm.  Let me think about this. 

The Hinge Festival of Lammas

 Early August is a hinge point in the calendar. In some ways, it's not as obvious a hinge as the autumnal equinox or the summer solstice; in fact, it's the time directly between those two hinges--we're as far away from the start of summer as we are from the start of autumn. But in some ways, it's just as significant a point of seasonal shift.

If we lived in medieval England, we would be celebrating the festival of Lammas, a festival that celebrates first harvests with loaves of bread standing in for that first harvest.  There might be processions to bakeries, to bless them and to bless the bakers.  

It would be a festival that celebrates abundance, the abundance that comes later in a cooler climate.  Of course, we here in Appalachia are celebrating that abundance too; the summer vegetables are still going strong with beautiful tomatoes at the farmer's market.  Yet across the region, apple orchards are opening today.

We may have slogged through summer long enough that we may feel that nothing will ever change--it will be hot and humid forever. The light hasn't changed significantly, the way it will in a month or two. But we are losing more daylight each day as we hurtle towards a different season. Students aren't in school yet, but the time draws closer. Most of us aren't agricultural people anymore, but if we were, we'd be seeing crops in their final ripening. Harvest would be coming soon.

Now is a good time to take an accounting. Have we been planning some summer festivities that we haven't gotten to do yet? Now is the time. Do we need to adjust our trajectories for the rest of the year? Let us make some plans.

Moving to the Tenure Track

A week from now, I'll be beginning the next chapter of my teaching life.  In some ways, it won't be that different from what I've already done.  It's not the drastic change that I experienced going from teaching to administration.  A week from now, I'm back on campus as an Associate Professor on the tenure track, not as an adjunct, not as a year-to-year lecturer.

My teaching load will be lighter:  4 classes instead of 5.  My service load will be heavier, as I didn't have to do committee work in my previous incarnations at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I will keep an eye on tenure requirements which are not onerous.

When I was in grad school, I wanted a job like the kind I have now, as a faculty member at a small, liberal arts college, the type of undergraduate school where I earned my BA degree.  Almost all of my fellow grad students who weren't on the Creative Writing track wanted that.  One of our Victorian Lit professors sneered at us for wanting "a unicorn" of a job.

I assumed I wouldn't be able to get tenure at a state university.  I worried about my ability to get my academic writing published.  I wanted to teach at a place where my creative writing would be a way to tenure, and now I am.  Service to the school and community will also count towards tenure.  I've been impressed with the way that SMU allows faculty to be their whole selves.

And yes, I would expect that at a liberal arts college, but I know it's not always that way.

In fact, I am a bit worried about what happens if leadership leaves.  I've worked with enough presidents of schools to know that the leadership at the top does make a difference.

But those are worries for a different day, a day which might not arrive at all.  SMC's president is my age, and he says he's planning to retire when he leaves, so he may be here at least another 5 years or more.  I suspect that our provost is in a similar position, and my dean, too, seems unlikely to leave.

I am coming onto the tenure track as an Associate Professor, a job title that I've never had.  I am happy that my years of experience are being recognized in this way.  I remember years ago showing a job posting to a friend who is 13 years older than I am, and she said, "I'm a little old to be starting as an Assistant Professor on a tenure track."  She likely would have felt the same if it was an Associate Professor position.

When we had that conversation, she was younger than I am now.  I'm happy to be an Associate Professor, but I'd have accepted the job if it had been an Assistant Professor tenure track.  I'm relieved to have the certainty of a job with a salary and benefits that I can count on for more than a year.

Adventures in Reading Outside of the House

I began the day, the outside of the house part of the day, at the dentist's office yesterday morning for an 8 a.m. appointment.  I brought a book, Francine Prose's Five Weeks in the Country.  By the end of the visit, after 29 pages, I decided that I was already dreading having to finish the book--the grown up characters in the book are SO odious.  I reminded myself--you don't have to read any further.  And so, back to the library it goes!

I ended the day, the outside of the house part of the day, at the dermatologist's office to get a basal cell skin cancer removed.  I arrived late in the afternoon, and it wasn't a surprise that they were running a bit late.  Happily, I had a book, Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad.  

What a delightful book!  How did I miss its publication back in 2005?

Well, a lot was going on in my life in 2005, much of it difficult (hurricanes, house damage, mother-in-law's broken hip and death by medical industrial complex). 

I was glad to have that book with me, because the appointment took longer than it might have earlier in the day.  Even more, I was glad it was a compelling book, a book I would have enjoyed, even if I hadn't been stuck with it, in the unique way that one is stuck in a doctor's office.  It's a short book, and I read about half of it during the time of waiting.

For the past several years, I've tried to get back in the habit of carrying a book with me everywhere, especially to health care appointments, where I know there will be some waiting time--far better to read a book than to read my phone.

Tornado Warning with Biopsy Results (Skin Cancer, Nothing Too Scary)

I was keeping an eye on the weather yesterday--but then again, I'm often keeping an eye on the weather.  In the late afternoon, the sky got dark, sunset dark, but we were far away from sunset.  The thunderstorm watch was upgraded to a warning, and the wind picked up.  I plugged in my phone; I wanted to have a full charged phone, just in case we might be about to lose power for while. 

I saw the tornado warning three minutes before it ended.  I'm not sure why my phone didn't sound an alert.  Happily, the storm never swooped south to us; I have a friend in North Asheville who lost power and internet.  Our lights only flickered once.

The wind died down, and we went back to watching Ride or Die.  It's a compelling show:  female friendship and assassins set in London and maybe now moving into Europe. I can't figure out where it's going, but I like the ride.  It's got enough funny moments to keep me hooked.  The violence is a bit much, but so far, I can tolerate it.

The other afternoon event of note:  I got a phone call from the dermatologist.  The biopsy from my July 1visit came back showing a basal cell on my shoulder.  I will go in today to get the spot scraped again.

In some ways, it's not a big deal.  But it will be my 3rd skin cancer in the last seven months.  In some ways, it's to be expected.  With a melanoma diagnosis, my doctor is keeping a much closer eye on my skin and sending in more samples to be diagnosed.  But it's sobering in many ways.

I also feel like I shouldn't make a big deal out of skin cancer, when other people are having much more serious biopsies done.  But I also see the big scar on my arm from the melanoma surgery; it's fading, but it's still noticeable.

Today I start the day with the dentist and end with the dermatologist.  It seems a commentary on modern life, or maybe just my life.

Car Inspections and Jesus Rewiring a Fixer-Upper

Yesterday was one of those days when maintenance tasks went more smoothly than anticipated.  It's almost August, the time for car safety inspections so that the annual car registration can be paid--in time to do the payments by mail, because the in-person process is a nightmare, only superseded by getting an NC driver's license.

I try to do the safety inspections early because both cars are older (2014 Prius and 2019 Rogue), and with age comes the chance that something will be wrong.  Happily, yesterday's inspections were quick and smooth, plus an oil change and tire inspection/alignment for the Rogue.  Last year, the process was more cumbersome because I was working full-time hours doing CPE at the Asheville VA Hospital.

The afternoon was a combination of cooking, movie watching (the both compelling and baffling Love Lies Bleeding), and grading for my online classes.  In the late afternoon, I had some phone conversations, which is unusual for me, two long phone calls in one afternoon.  In one case, I realized I hadn't heard from an old college friend in awhile; he usually calls on our birthdays as well as other points, so not hearing from him was worrisome.  Happily, he's fine, but doing a lot of traveling.  I also had a long chat with my cousin.

I had that first of the season realization that evenings are getting a smidge darker earlier.  I had already realized that morning light filters through later.

This morning, I returned to a poem idea I had on Sunday:  Jesus rewires the fixer-upper.  Careful readers of this blog might say, "Wait, did you finish the poem about Jesus buying the fixer-upper?"  No, I haven't even started.  One reason I value this blog is as a repository of ideas and inspirations that are easy to find later.

I still plan to get back to that original idea, but Sunday as I was walking, this next poem, which may be part of a series, came to me as I was thinking about our own experience working with professionals to get our Spartanburg fixer-upper rewired.  Could Jesus say the word and have the wiring fix itself?  Does Jesus respect/fear the laws of electricity/physics more than the laws of biology which govern the human body?

I'm still in the process of creating the poem.  I used the verb "wrestling," but this morning's writing hasn't been a struggle.  I started the poem not knowing where it would end, which is not how I always write.  In fact, I'm more likely to think and think and think about a poem idea and figure it all out--for some poems, this process results in writing out a finished poem with few surprises, and for some poems, I figure out that it's not worth the effort of typing it into the computer.

I like the potential for surprise that comes from starting before I figure it all out.  Here are the lines that surprised me this morning:

Jesus knows that first you must
cast out the demons of ungrounded
wires and faulty connections.

Last Full Week of Summer

This week is my last full week of summer.  Of course, it's not exactly summer in its no-working glory, the way that some might assume.  I'm still teaching 2 online classes for Broward College; a week ago, I'd be turning in grades for the 2 online classes I taught at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I'm still a part-time minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.

I've had academic work to do as a student.  At the beginning of summer, back in May, I still had several weeks of the Lutheran Confessions class that I was taking.  On Saturday, I turned in the paper on Paul for the Paul class I took in June.  I also had a huge writing project for the Candidacy Endorsement process, a project that was due last Monday.

But not having to commute to Spartanburg every week day has left me lots of time.  Not teaching 5 days a week in person has left me lots of time.  I've used some of this time in volunteer work:  mail delivery for camp, making cookies for counselors, and doing quilting for Lutheran World Relief with the local Lutheran church.

I've also had time to walk.  I've walked almost every day, which is almost impossible during the 8 months that onground classes are in session.  In some ways, I've been eating in a super-nutritious way too, with lots of veggies from farmer's markets.  The tomatoes this year are perfect, unlike last year when the tomato farmer told me there was too much rain.  I don't eat as many beans in the summer, unlike in the winter where I bring a mix of garbanzo beans, lentils, barley, and chopped veggies for lunch at school.

I've also had time for friends and family--but then again, I try to make time for friends and family throughout the year.  I always think of the ones I'm not seeing, those who don't live too far away and those who do.

This week will be a similar mix of what we've had the past 3 months:  teaching tasks, maintenance tasks (car and dentist this week), walking, cooking, strategizing how to get the fixer-upper house into a more livable state, some time with friends, sermon writing, sewing to do on my quilt top.  I am a lucky woman.