Safe in Indiana

I am sitting at a desk in the Drury Hotel in Carmel, Indiana, on the northern edge of Indianapolis.  I'm here for an onground intensive for the TEEM program, my current route to ordination.  If you've been following along all week, you know that I'm here a day early.

It's a long trip, which I make by car.  I like being able to arrive with all my stuff, and I really like not dealing with the hassles of airline travel.  For this trip, I was really happy to be able to change my travel plans with minimum hassle.

I'm glad I left early.  I got in my car yesterday at 6:40 a.m., and it was already raining.  The illuminated signs on the interstate that give information about road conditions told drivers of high wind warnings and advised us to be alert for debris on the roads.  As I made my way north and west, the rain continued, and there was already standing water on the road.

Happily, the rain wasn't heavy, and there wasn't much traffic on the roads with me.  I was able to check into the hotel with no problem, and there were plenty of luggage carts available.  I got unpacked and organized and headed down to dinner.

Before the TEEM program intensive in June, I had never heard of this hotel chain.  I am happy to return here again.  I love that they offer both breakfast and dinner.  The dinner menu changes, although I imagine there are standards.  When I was here in June, the taco/burrito bar was offered twice, which was fine with me.

Last night we had pulled pork, which was great because I had been craving barbecue.  It wasn't the burnt ends kind of experience I wanted, but it was good enough.  I got my third glass of wine, added the former pour to it, and headed back to my room with a very full glass.

Another plus to staying at this hotel is the 3 free drinks every evening.  It's not just wine, but also several kinds of beer, along with all sorts of mixed drinks.  It's an interesting business decision, and last night I was happy to partake.

I spent time reading a non-academic book as I sipped my wine.  On Tuesday, when I realized I'd be at the hotel an extra day, I got some regular fiction from the library, so last night, I started Kevin Wilson's Perfect Little World.  Earlier this year, I read Now Is Not the Time to Panic, so when I saw it in the stacks, I decided on another book of his.  So far, it's compelling.  I also got Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles, which I've read twice before.  It's an interesting look at a near-future dystopia, and I'd like to revisit it.  We'll see if this week is the week.

Today I plan to read more of Perfect Little World, along with academic reading for the coming week.  I brought my quilting project with me, so I also plan to do some sewing--my hope is that there will be something interesting on the cable stations on the big TV, but if not, there's plenty on my computer.

I'm sure Indianapolis offers many diversions, but I'm going to stay put and enjoy having time to focus on joys that I usually have to tuck in the margins of my other responsibilities.

Rough Drafts and Fall Break

We are at midterm at Spartanburg Methodist College--which means it's Fall Break today and tomorrow.  My spouse and I will have a day of working on different projects:  he's putting polyurethane on the sanded hardwood floors in the fixer-upper house in S'burg, and I have various appointments today (dermatologist, hair, Zoom session with one of our onground intensive instructors).

Yesterday my spouse and I went to S'burg in different cars, so I had some time alone at the Arden house.  What did I do with my alone time?  Cooking and baking, of course.  I have a lot of apples which aren't getting fresher, so I made this apple cake; it's a strange recipe, with mashing the apples with a mixer to get the crumbly batter into something that is more like a cake batter.  The finished cake is very moist.  When I first took it out of the oven, it seemed more like a bread pudding.  It's delicious, both iced and un-iced.

I also made dinner with the ingredients I bought on Tuesday for this Smitten Kitchen recipe that uses frozen ravioli and fresh spinach. It's similar to another Smitten Kitchen recipe that includes tomatoes (I use a small can of petite diced), cooking on the top of the stove, with a last-minute broil.

You might think I would do more writing during a time in the house when I knew that the T.V. would stay quiet.  I did write a draft of the paper that is due Oct. 5.  And while my Nonfiction Writing students worked on their next assignment, I did write a rough draft of my Mary in a Time of Climate Change,  poem (see this post for the original inspiration).  It went in surprising directions, although I didn't have much of a vision, so the main surprise was having any direction at all.

It reminds me of a similar process a few weeks ago.  I had been trying to write about Nancy Drew taking up quilting.  I was leafing through A. E. Stallings' Afterlife, her wonderful collection of mostly published poems, and came across "Medea, Homesick."  I thought about Nancy Drew, homesick for her youth.  And a poem just tumbled out of me.

This morning I've been looking at rough drafts of poems that I've composed in the last 2 months.  My goal for Fall Break is to finish one or two.  I am delighted to realize that I've written more than I remembered, although some of them are just some lines that may or may not have potential.

Well, let me get ready to go on my walk.  I'm eating extra apple cake calories--plus, I want to enjoy autumnal weather before it turns rainy/wintry.

Farewell, Wendell Berry

I was sad to hear of the death of Wendell Berry on Monday.  But why should I be sad?  He was 92 and had lived a good life, mostly on his own terms, from what I could see.  But the death felt like "one of the greats has left us" moments.  I remember reading him in college, so his writing has been with me a long time.

Back in my undergraduate days,  I felt somewhat embarrassed for liking someone whose work was so accessible.  Now, of course, I think it's one of his more important traits.  Berry's work has seemed vital for decades now.

What I value most these days is his ability to never sink into gloom for too long. He manages to sound prophetic (one of the prophet's duties being to call people back to right living, as well as to warn), without setting up a house in the land of the apocalypse. He always comes back to one of his main themes: ". . . hope is one of our duties. A part of our obligation to our own being and to our descendants is to study our life and our condition, searching always for the authentic underpinnings of hope. And if we look, these underpinnings can still be found. For one thing, though we have caused the earth to be seriously diseased, it is not yet without health. The earth we have before us now is still abounding and beautiful" ("Conservation and Local Economy" from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, page 11).

He wrote those words almost 20 years ago, and yet, they still have relevance.  Some days, when the news seems unrelentingly bad, it's hard to continue to hope.  But it's one of the more important activities we can undertake.

Here's a passage that reminds us of the miracles which surround us each day:  "Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes" ("Christianity and the Survival of Creation" from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, page 103).

That passage made me gasp when I first read it, and it still does.

As I was looking over old blog posts about him, I came across this one that I wrote after reading  Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder.  It made me want to read the book again.  It seems a fitting read for this tim of so much loss of greatness.

Satisfying Sunday: Worship/Cookout in the Pavilion and Reading in the Evening

 Yesterday, I made this Facebook post which sums up my Sunday morning:

"We had a great morning at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, where I preached on Matthew 16 and ended my sermon by asking us to think about how our lives themselves are gospels that testify to the identity of Jesus and his role in our lives. We had a hamburger/hotdog lunch in the pavilion, with delicious food and nourishing fellowship. I'm not sure how the morning could have been much better, short of winning a lottery amount that would let us solve the shortage of affordable housing in the area and provide quality health care for all."

To see a recording of my sermon, go here to my YouTube channel.  To read the manuscript, go to this blog post.

The afternoon was also good.  I did a bit of sewing, caught up on chores, and got ready for the week.  In the evening, my spouse was listening to old Hank Williams songs, and I read--a delight!

I read most of Tara Menon's Under Water last night.  I read a bit of it earlier in the day, in the just after midnight moments of Sunday, where it confused me at first.  It took me a bit of time to realize the narrative is shifting back and forth in time, mainly from 2004 to 2012, but also back to earlier childhood years of the narrator.  I read the Acknowledgements and figured out the tsunami angle. When I picked up the book, I thought it was more of a future apocalypse kind of novel, but it’s a different kind of climate catastrophe novel.

At first it seems like a slight book. But it packs a powerful punch—about a woman who undergoes two catastrophes, the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

And now, a new week--a week that ends in Quilt Camp.  Let me get ready.

A Good Stretch of Poetry Days

The past few days have been a good poetry days, in a more well-rounded sense--by which I mean, I've been doing more than just writing down a line or two.  Let me capture what a good stretch of poetry days looks like:

--A few months ago, I had an idea for a poem, Jesus buying a fixer-upper of a house.  I didn't do anything with this idea since I first had it (in late April, as evidenced by this blog post).  But this week, I returned to it, and I'm really delighted with the surprises that the poem offers.

--Yesterday, I read a volume of poems.  My students were working through a time management module and had to enter due dates into calendars and planners.  I thought they would blaze through the assignment, but only a few of them did.  I went back to my office to get something to read.

--That book was Donna Vorreyer's Unrivered.  What an amazing book!  Vorreyer explores themes of aging and the natural world and relationships, and many of her poems have theological imagery and ideas that I didn't expect.  She's also skilled at a variety of forms.  It's a book that demands a re-read, which I hope to do soon.

--I read most of the book in one sitting, and I returned to read the rest of it later in the afternoon.  It's always a very different experience to read an entire collection in one day, and I'm glad I did it yesterday.

--I had a late afternoon phone call after the Endorsement Panel yesterday.  I was invited to be the official poet, a poet laureate of sorts, of the Southeastern Synod's Synod Assembly.  What a cool possibility!

--My mom heard me say that I was invited to be poet laureate of the Synod, which would also be an interesting possibility.

--This morning I returned to my poem about Jesus working on the fixer-upper.  Here's what I wrote, a stanza which surprised me--I didn't know I was going to write it until the lines flowed out:

Jesus wipes down every surface,
scrubbing when necessary.
He paints the walls in a soothing
version of the color that first flooded
the world when God said,
“Let there be light.”

Signs and Signifiers and Keeping a Record

It's been a strange beginning to the work week.  Let me record, so I don't forget.

--I've been in that liminal space where it's time to settle into the semester, yet I could still delay doing that for another few days.  My office hour time has been consumed by meetings and Convocation, so I have yet to get my Brightspace course shells set up.  At this point, it doesn't matter, because the classes meet in person.  Soon, though, it will be time for students to submit work, and I need to get those structures set up.

--I've been trying to decide how to record what I do in class--I'm going to keep a weekly list in my bullet journal, because it will be easier to find it again.  I've also discovered that I need to do a better job of adding handouts to the course shell.  I did none of that in last year's Creative Writing class.  Happily, I recorded a lot of what I did in this blog.

--Last night, I saw a Facebook post that Wesley Seminary created with a “We’re welcoming students back to campus!” motif: tables of breakfast, welcome baskets, happy faces. I am happy for those students, don’t get me wrong. But it does remind me of how my time at seminary was not what I expected, with no one on hand for move in day, no welcome of any kind. We were still social distancing in 2022, so that was part of it. For the 1st part of the semester back in 2022, we wore masks to our in-person classes.

For the most part, I’m still very happy I got to go to seminary, to attend physically in person, for a year. But occasionally, I feel a stunning sadness at all the ways it was so different from what I expected.

--Let me end with a happier memory of this 2nd week's beginning.  I went to the library to pick up my book on hold:  Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad about My Neck.  The librarian touched her neck and said, "This 72 year old librarian feels seen."  

I told her about my idea for my Nonfiction Writing class, which is focusing on the wide variety of personal essays we could write as a way to begin the class.  I'm bringing in Molly Jong-Fast's NYT essay with its realistic assessment of plastic surgery which references the Ephron essay.  I said, "Of course, these students are 19 and 20 years old, and they have gorgeous skin, so I don't know if they can relate to any of this."

The librarian beamed at me and said, "You're going to have a wonderful class.  Those students are so lucky."

We did have a really good class yesterday.  My English 101 and ALP classes were good too.

--In an evening of whiplash, with up and down feelings, I did ask God for a sign, even though I don't really believe God works that way.  I looked at the screen door and saw a perfect, tiny butterfly, so perfect that I wondered if someone had put a butterfly sticker on the screen.  Nope--my spouse took the screen door off the sliding track, and it flew away.

I'm going to see it as a sign of blessing, even if I'm a woman who tells herself that she doesn't believe in signs.

A Week-end in Books and Sermons

It was a good week-end, full of bread baking and writing (sermon and a poem), a good Sunday at church, and some piece work (by which I mean sewing together small scraps).  We watched a lot of Hot Bench, a court TV show that is slightly smarter than all the rest, but only slightly, with the cases which are more small claims court, not life threatening types of situations.

Saturday was an easier day than some Saturdays, because I already had a satisfying sermon draft by Saturday.  I can't always manage that feat, but when I do, I notice how much less stressed I feel on Saturday.  I slept better as Saturday night went into Sunday too.  

I was pleased with how I delivered it too and happy about the last part of the last sentence, which wasn't in the manuscript: "to live into a future where everyone has a place at the table, not under the table." If you'd like to see the sermon, you can watch the recording here, on my YouTube channel.

On Saturday, I went to the library and wandered the stacks; it's a small branch library, so it doesn't take long.  I saw some books from Ann Hood, books I hadn't read.  Once, long ago, she was one of my favorite authors--when did I stop reading her?  I checked out two of her books, and I read The Obituary Writer in one late afternoon and evening.  It's a fairly short book, and an easy read, a book that revolves around 2 characters and their decisions, decisions mostly about love.  I was less interested in the one who lost her love in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but I kept reading.

Last night, I finished Patti Smith's latest, Bread of Angels.  Here's how I described it on the books read list I keep:  Parts were compelling, parts boring, most of it interesting, but not really in the mood for this book, which made me sad and made me wonder if I might should save it until later when I’m more in the mood for childhood creativity in the midst of poverty and adolescent/young adulthood creativity in a variety of hovels and grittiness. But what I really wanted was insight into later middle age creativity and not much of that.

But I might also have written this:  "In other words, it's not Just Kids.  But of course, nothing will ever match that book."

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.

Happy Independence Day: History as Life Preserver

I have begun this 4th of July listening to a variety of podcasts:  an interview with The Rest is History British podcasters and David Remnick and a NYT Book Review podcast with Jill Lepore talking about history and good books for Independence day.  I listened to this story on heartland rock, which didn't tell me anything I didn't already have figured out about Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."  This piece on Octavia Butler's typewriter was disappointingly short. 

I have been re-reading Octavia Butler's Wild Seed, and I might go on to re-read Kindred, both interesting approaches to understanding history.  The interview with Jill Lepore meanders into a remembering of what it was to be immersed in books, especially the summer reading in childhood type.  Glorious!  I am always grateful to have longer stretches of reading time than I sometimes do during the school year.

This morning, I've also been re-reading past July 4 blog posts that I wrote.  Every 4th of July post is both similar and different, full of hope, yet also tinged by dread of what might be coming.  This year is no different.  Sure, we have a corrupt president, but that has usually been a national truth revealing how many different ways one can be corrupt, if one has enough power.

Here is the way I concluded my 2012 July 4 post.  It seems perfect for any ordinary Independence Day, but also for this one, which celebrates the U.S. at year 250:

I love this picture of a flag and a life preserver.  I often wish that our country could do more to hold out a life preserver to oppressed people across the globe.  But it's good to remember that our history serves as a life preserver of sorts, a beacon of hope to so many.

Summer Reading Report Card

I am happy to report that I am managing to read this summer.  Once I took reading in the summer as a given--classes came to a close, and what else would one do?  Now I continue onward:  as one set of classes ends, I teach the next set.  But summer still feels spacious in a way that other seasons do not, in part because I'm working from home more, commuting less.

I would likely not have picked up Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, if a friend hadn't talked about how much she liked it; she read it after her grown up son raved about it.   After the movie came out a few months ago, she asked if I had read it, and after her recommendation, I added it to my ever growing list of books to read.

I read The Martian (I wrote about it in this blog post) and liked it well enough, but Weir hasn't been one of those writers whose work I seek out.  Project Hail Mary felt familiar yet different.  I liked the flashbacks better than the parts in the spaceship.  I found the premise intriguing, the in-depth mechanical explorations less so.  

After finishing Project Hail Mary, I was in the mood for something shorter.  Kevin Wilson's Now Is Not the Time to Panic fit the bill.  Wilson captures a different kind of summer from the one I am having, a teenager without a job kind of summer.  Wilson captures the mid-90's, captures what it was like to have artistic aspirations in a pre-World Wide Web age.  The parts of the book about the girl artist grown up were a bit less developed, but I wasn't as curious about her--should I have been?

When I was younger, in my middle school years, my goal was to read 100 books in the summer.  Often the local library had some kind of contest.  Of course, those were easier books which I could read in an afternoon.  When I was older, in high school, I was reading the books I felt I should read by the time I went off to college, along with pulpy romances and multigeneration family sagas.

Now I just want to be reading books that call to me when I'm doing other tasks.  These two books did just that. 

Great (but Easy) Books to End a Reading Slump

When I read/hear a book review/author interview, if the book sounds good, I put a request in at the local library--the same goes for social media.  But often, it takes many months before I actually read the book, which means I often don't remember where I heard about the book.  In some ways, it doesn't matter, but I'm often curious, particularly if the book disappoints.

I'm happy to report that my 3 latest reads have not disappointed.  I am always overjoyed when I get books that are the kind of reading experiences where I get lost in the book and/or when I wake up thinking about the book.

*  Still Life by Sarah Winman was not that kind of book.  It was more gently compelling, a perfect just before bed kind of read, when I can only read a page or two, every evening or so.  It was a book about two characters who meet in Tuscany as WWII is coming to an end and the ways their lives revolve around Tuscany and each other.  It was a delight of a read, not the 800 page sprawling history, but encompassing post-WWII 20th century history nonetheless.  It showed humans at their best, and occasionally (enough to make the book compelling) not at their best.  What made it gentle is that the characters were able to recover from bad behavior.  It's the kind of book that bubbles up in my brain occasionally, and in a good way.

-- Nonesuch by Francis Spufford was also rooted in World War II, but it was a different approach, with time traveling and wizardry of a sort.  I loved the main character, a woman both of her time and ahead of her time, lots of interesting insights about gender and relationships and finance.  I had trouble visualizing the way the time travel happened, by way of statues and shapes shifting, so I scanned the pages and pages of description, and had a reading experience that came out just fine.  It was a fun but also serious read about fights against fascists, both the historically accurate kind (Britain during the bombings of London) and the time travelling, fantastical kind.

*  The Wedding People by Alison Espach was a different kind of delight, revolving around the ways we try to redeem our lives through our relationships.  At first, I almost took it back to the library, because I didn't want to read about very expensive weddings and the entitled people who want them.  But the book was in high demand, even though it was published in 2022, so I decided to read the first chapter--and I was hooked.  The main character is an adjunct English faculty member, so there's some delightful stuff about reading and teaching, along with lots of humor--and a happy ending!

# Next up is Colored Television by Danzy Senna.  How delightful to have a bit of time to return to reading, one of my earliest loves. 

* I put these books on my list after reading Paisley Rekdal's March 18 Facebook post:  "OK people, I'm getting ready for a little R&R time and I'm looking for a fun book that will tax no more than 5 brain cells. Like, writing that will basically bathe my frontal lobe in martinis and oxytocin and chocolate for a day or two then evaporate. A one-night stand of a book. A dumb but hot college boyfriend of a book. What is that book? I swear, I will go back to serious literature and yelling at my congresspeople and more paperwork in a week, but right now I just need a recommendation for a fun, IQ-obliterating read. No judgement. What is that book for you?"  These two books were so delightful and satisfying that I returned to her post this morning to capture some additional recommendations.

-- This book came to me by way of a Fresh Air interview with the author.

#  This book came by way of Leslie Pietrzyk's May 16 Facebook post of 4 books that she had recently read: "Earlier in the year I was in a patch of so-so books, and I'm delighted to report that these excellent beauties got me out of my slump! Highly recommend, and 3 are writer-adjacent!"   Her post reminded me that I heard good things about Colored Television when it first came out, so I requested it from the library, where it arrived in record time.

Reading in the Waning Days of 2025

It's been a great month for reading--less so for writing, but I'll get back to a more regular writing schedule in January.  I've found myself wishing I could go back and repeat some of the reading, most particularly Ian McEwan's What We Can Know.  

Would I wish that I could reread it if I hadn't heard this New York Times Book Club podcast about the book?  Probably.  I knew at the time I was reading it that I would want to reread it.  I zoomed through it the first time just to find out what happened, and I knew I would want an additional read to appreciate some of the other aspects of the novel, outside of the propulsive plot.

My last read of 2025 will be Kristin Hannah's The Women, which I found in the community library where my folks live and where I'm visiting.  I had heard such good things about it, and it, too, is a propulsive novel.  But I can't see myself reading it again, once I'm done.  It made me think about the TV shows M*A*S*H and China Beach.  I've only read 100 pages, so I'm interested if Hannah goes in any unexpected directions or adds some depth to the characters.  So far, there's lots of exploring of the place of Vietnam and the surgical procedures that nurses did under intense pressure during the Vietnam war.

My mom and I spent some time in the community library in the afternoon.  She is always on the hunt for good books, and I had this momentary hope that we might find the McEwan book.  After all, the Hannah book is recent--but it's one of the few in the library published in this century.  We found a John Jakes novel, Charleston, along with another book. 

As I have been doing more intense reading in December, I've remembered my own writing impulses, particularly the novels I thought I would write.  I've been thinking about my writing goals for 2026.  I'm not sure I want to commit to writing a novel in 2026, but I'm not sure I don't.  Let me continue to think:  if I was writing a novel that wasn't going to be intertwined stories, what would the plot be?

Reading: Books, Skin, Weather Forecasts

Yesterday was an unexpected reading day.  I took Ian McEwan's What We Can Know with me to the dermatologist's office, and I did have time to start reading it.  It hooked me very early--it's a great concept, a book that takes place both in our time and a hundred years forward, with a literary mystery (a great poem that has disappeared).  It reminds me of A. S. Byatt's Possession, which I loved when I first read it but have never been able to make my way through again.

My dermatologist declared me to have passed my annual exam with flying colors, even as she zapped me with nitrogen for spot after spot and biopsied a spot.  She said I have beautiful skin, and I'm happy for compliments in my increasingly aging body.  I see all the splotches and stray hairs and scaly bits of my skin.

I got back home and still felt a bit off kilter, as I often do after a doctor or dentist visit.  So I sat at the computer, but I realized I still wanted to be reading, reading a book, not articles about our current time of politics on the computer.  So I switched.

My spouse was happy to be watching his Cops-like show, so I kept going.  I had bought some Peppermint Creme coffee at the Fresh Market on my way to the dermatologist.  The day was overcast, with the hope of afternoon snow.

Well, I had hope, even though the system was scheduled to come through later in the evening/overnight hours.  I got up this morning to cold rain instead, and I'm trying not to feel depressed about it.  I was looking forward to wintry weather on a day when I didn't have to be anywhere.  I can still cook the pot roast I bought yesterday, of course.  It will be just as good on a rainy day as it would be on a day with a wintry mix.

And there should be more time to read today--bliss!

Reading Day, 2025

If you came to this blog hoping that you'd find a meditation on World AIDS Day or the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955, head over this post on my theology blog.  I did some brief researching of AIDS statistics, which are sobering:   according to a UN Fact Sheet, 1.3 million people worldwide contracted AIDS in 2024 alone--that's just one year. Since the beginning of this epidemic, 91.4 million people have been infected, and 44.1 million have died of the disease.

Today will be a different work day for me.  My students at Spartanburg Methodist College have a reading day today, followed by several days of final exams, but I don't have to report to campus. Grades are due at SMC on Dec. 8, and Dec. 10 for my online classes. So I have lots of grading this week, but it will feel easy because there's no commuting to Spartanburg.

This morning felt luxurious in some ways:  I can put off my walk until later in the morning, so I've had a slower morning than most Mondays have been.  I'm trying not to think about next semester, where I'll have a class that starts at 9, so Mondays won't be slow-paced at all.  Maybe I will keep an extra pair of sneakers in my office and go for my walk later in the mornings on MWF.  I won't get much in the way of hill training, but it would be good to have that option.

I will start grading later.  Today is one of the few days where I don't have meetings or appointments scheduled, so I'm trying to savor the slowness.

I still have that hollow-brained feeling when it comes to composing poems, but I do have the capacity to read.  Earlier this semester, I heard the author Richard Osman interviewed on NPR, in advance of the Netflix version of his book, The Thursday Murder Club, the book which is now a series of books.  I hadn't heard of any of it before, but the interview whetted my appetite.  The book is just as delightful as I hoped it would be.

Yesterday my spouse was sewing on the machine, which meant that watching TV wasn't really possible.  I decided to put away my sewing, switch to Christmas music on Spotify, and sink into that book.  It was a wonderful part of the afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll go get the next batch of books that I've ordered from the public library--next up will be Ian McEwan's latest, which has gotten great reviews.  I'll read it first, since I suspect I won't be able to renew it.

A reading day, a holiday spent reading--delightful!

Scraps Before Thanksgiving

I am feeling like my attention span has been ripped into scraps.  I'm not too worried.  It's that time of year:  close to the end of the term, but not quite there yet.  Let me record some scraps that I want to remember.

--It has been a week of very long commutes back from Spartanburg Methodist College.  On Thursday, there was a terrible wreck that shut down the interstate.  On Monday and Tuesday there was road construction on the westbound side of I 26, my fastest route home.  On Monday, I got off at the Saluda, NC exit, and took the winding road up to Hendersonville, a road also under construction.  Yesterday I took SC 11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway, over to Highway 25, a much easier trip.  It still takes longer than I 26 when there's no construction on the interstate.  When there is construction, heading cross country is much easier.

--The long commute does leave me even more tired than usual.  I have decided that I just don't care--I'm going to bed when I'm tired.  So last night, I fell asleep at 7.

--I've been texting with my uncle and cousin about Thanksgiving.  We've strategized food, of course.  My cousin's daughter wants to do something with fabric scraps and a sweatshirt.  I plan to show her all of my fabric stash and let her have fun.  I'll also explore my new sewing machine.

--I started reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours again last night.  Yes, I read it back in May (according to my Books Read 2025 document).  But reading and discussing Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway in my British Literature class made me want to read it again.  So yesterday, when I was at the library, I checked it out again.  What a delight of a book!

--We finally had a plumber come out yesterday to fix things that seemed beyond our capabilities.  Did you know that wax rings for toilets come in different sizes?  I did not.  I realize that most people can go their whole lives without even knowing the inner workings of a toilet.  Some days, I envy them.

--I'm told we now have two working showers.  But the hall shower will always be my favorite.  We chose tile for it that still takes my breath away in certain lights.

--In past houses, the slow pace of home repair aggravated me.  In this house, I find myself not caring.  It's a pleasant aspect of late midlife that few people mention:  many things that once aggravated me or took up lots of brain space no longer concern me.

In Praise of Untidy Women: Teaching "Mrs. Dalloway"

This morning, I was thinking of the last time I taught Mrs. Dalloway.  I know that I didn't teach it when I was just out of grad school, that first job at Trident Technical College in South Carolina.  I thought I might have taught it when I taught the survey classes at the University of Miami; I have a memory of reading the paperback on the Miami Metro as I commuted back in the years 2000-2001.  

But this morning, I went to my computer file called "Old Computer," to the Teacher Stuff file in that Old Computer file.  Sure enough, there was an old syllabus from the turn of the century, a syllabus which shows that I did not teach Mrs. Dalloway.  

I think I was thinking of adding Mrs. Dalloway to the syllabus, but I might have been re-reading it during my long commute on public transportation because I had just read Michael Cunningham's The Hours.  Back in those days, the only Virginia Woolf selections in the Norton Anthology were her nonfiction.

This morning, I'm reflecting on age and teaching, age and literary characters.  Clarissa Dalloway is 52 years old.  If I had taught this book back in 2000, I'd have been closer to young Clarissa Dalloway than Clarissa Dalloway at midlife.  Now, I am 8 years older than Clarissa Dalloway in the book.

As I have re-read chunks of the book this past week, I've been struck by how Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts move back and forth in time.  But I do wonder if my students, who are the same age as young Clarissa, find it as compelling as I do.  After teaching the book yesterday, I spent a good chunk of my drive home feeling this fierce yearning for my girlhood self and all her friends.  In my case, it's more poignant because so many of my high school female friends have died.  They won't be crashing any dull parties that I might give, the way that Sally arrives uninvited at the end of the novel.

I really loved the descriptions of the young Sally Seton with this reading; I don't remember loving her as fiercely in past readings as I have been now.  I love that one of young Clarissa's older aunts calls Sally "untidy."

With this reading, I'm also struck by how the Peter Walsh character is the one who is much more stuck in adolescence than the two women, Sally and Clarissa.  He still yearns for them, and I suspect he's primarily yearning for the women that they were, or the women that he thought they were.  And I'm feeling slightly guilty, because I'm not spending much time on reading the Septimus passages, although I do circle back to discussing him.

In my morning meanderings, I came across this article in the New York Times, Michael Cunningham reflecting on Mrs. Dalloway.  My writing time draws to a close, so I'll conclude using Cunningham's conclusion:  "“Mrs. Dalloway” would be a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery. The novel would also mark the early period of a literary career that would change forever the ways in which novels are written, and read. It’s an intricately wrought portrait of a place and a moment, and a stunningly acute depiction of the multifarious experience of living a life, anywhere, at any time."

"Frankenstein" in the English Composition Classroom

For those of you who are wonder when this blog became a teaching blog, I apologize.  It's an easy way for me to keep track of ideas that work.  In an ideal world, others would see and be inspired.  But on a practical level, it's an easy way for me to remember and be inspired.

In my English 101 class yesterday, I knew that I wanted them to do the Build Your Own Gothic/Spooky story worksheet that I created for an Edgar Allen Poe module in the spring, which I described in this blog post.  I thought I needed a bit more, so I had the previews for the new Frankenstein movie ready to go.  

As I was walking to class, I thought about Mary Shelley's journal, and I knew I had copies of the pages where she talks about dreaming of her dead baby and bringing it back to life.  I rushed back to the copy machine to make a few more copies, and a successful teaching day was born.

I handed out the pages of Mary Shelley's journal, the one page handout that captures several entries where she is grieving the baby and where she records the dream.  I had them read it and see if any spooky stories were suggested.

Then I showed the two previews:  one that gives us the creature's voice and one that gives us Victor Frankenstein's voice.  We talked a bit about the novel, about the film versions, about the ways it has inspired so many of us in so many ways.

Then I had them fill in the worksheet.  They settled in and seemed truly engaged with their ideas; this class is amazing in that way.

Today, I'll add this story from the CBS Sunday news show.  It's both an interview with Guillermo del Toro, the director, and lots of interesting information and visuals.

I'll need to come up with a bit more for them to do, since they did the worksheet on Tuesday.  Happily, I have a few hours to figure it out.

Explorations and the Imagery of Those Interactions

Today is the federal holiday that celebrates Columbus Day; I'm willing to wager serious money that most of us don't have the day off.  When your mail doesn't arrive, you can take a minute to remember Columbus, who wanted to find a shorter trade route, but failed miserably in that goal. 

For most cities, gone are the days when we'd mark this holiday with parades and time off. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and later have likely rethought this holiday.

What marked an exciting opportunity for overcrowded Europeans in the time of Columbus began a time of unspeakable slaughter and loss for the inhabitants of the Americas, many of whom have never recovered or who disappeared completely.  Let us take a minute to remember all of the cultures that have vanished because of these kinds of encounters.  Let us mourn that loss.

But although those cultural encounters came at an enormous human cost, it also provided the opportunity to enrich the cultures on both sides of these encounters.  Look at the European cuisine before the time of Columbus, and let yourself feel enormous gratitude for the vegetables that came from the Americas. Look at the cultures that existed in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and let yourself marvel at the ways in which technology enables the building of cities.  For those of us who benefit from domesticated animals, which is almost all of us, let us celebrate Columbus and the opening of the space between cultures.

This morning, I'm revisiting the 2011 discussion with Charles Mann on NPR's Fresh Air.  He had just published 1493:  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.  He points out that the arrival of Europeans does a lot to create wilderness--the diseases brought over wiped out huge swaths of indigenous populations, which left the land unpopulated, which meant the forces of the natural/non-human world could reclaim the land.

Today, perhaps because I spent a huge part of the week-end watching the 2020 mini-series The Stand, I'm thinking of the implications of disease.  Indigenous people had experienced something similar to the disease described by Stephen King, seeing most of their people wiped out.  Mann says the number was 2/3:  

"GROSS: So in North America, when the settlers were fighting wars with the Indians, the Indians that they were fighting with, the Native Americans they were fighting with, were survivors of these plagues?

Mr. MANN: Yes, they were, by and large, people, you know, who were in a state of complete cultural shock because, you know, two-thirds of the people that they knew had died. And there is just no culture that can resist foreign invasion, even by small bands of people like the Europeans were, when you've just had this enormous, shattering experience."

Later in the broadcast, he says that in the 100 years after Columbus, 1 out of 5 people on the planet had died.

I have been trying to think of a graceful transition to my next subject, but I can't come up with one, so I will just wrench away to something else:

Last night, as the sun was setting, I discovered that I had made my quilt top too wide.  How could this have happened?  Just last week-end, it wasn't wide enough, and I didn't think I added that much?  My spouse and I devised a plan, and I set to work ripping out the seam of part of the quilt that was too wide; later I'll add it to make the length of the quilt fit--it's far from catastrophic, as discoveries go.

I looked at the sunset colors in the sky and thought about that time when the crew on one of Columbus' ships saw land from a distance, that liminal time before all the changes got set into motion.  I am now trying to create a poem about ripping out seams on Columbus Day.  So far, it's not working, but I wrote down some ideas and maybe they'll come together.

This morning I look at my breakfast and think about the explorations of Columbus and those who came after.  I have pumpkin butter that I've made on my toast made out of 9 grain bread.  I began the morning by drinking coffee, and then switched to hot tea with milk and sugar.  It was Columbus that made this meal possible, although if he hadn't done it, surely someone else would have.

I think about the next 500 years.  If humanity survives, what will they look back to in 2025, either in amazement or in sorrow?

Saturday Fragments with "The Stand"

It's one of those Saturday mornings where I wonder where the time has gone, even though I know it's not actually late.  Let me collect a few fragments from the past few days:

--Last week, we explored a Halloween channel, but I quickly realized there wasn't much I wanted to watch.  What I really wanted to watch was the 2020 version of Stephen King's The Stand.  I didn't want to pay to stream it, so I requested the DVD from the library.  We watched the first two episodes last night, and I was impressed.

--I thought I had watched part of the first episode before, but as we watched it, none of it felt familiar to me.

--This morning, I found a podcast from 2021 that has a discussion both of the 2 versions of the book and the 2020 series.  At first I was confused because the site I was on gave an August 2025 broadcast version.  I did some digging and found the original website where one can watch the podcast, which is an aspect of podcasts which I usually don't use.

--I've spent the last week thinking about a book-length collection of poems.  I had thought that I might never return to that type of project.  But lately, I thought of using my 2019 manuscript (I wrote about its assembly in this blog post) as a base, adding poems that have been published/written since I assembled it.  The idea intrigues me, and this term, I have time to pull it together for a few contest submissions to presses I want to support.

--On my way home yesterday, I stopped at my favorite apple orchard, Coston Farms.  I bought my favorite apple variety, the Mutsu.  But I wanted another one for contrast, so I got the Pink Lady, which was my grandmother's favorite later in her life.  Earlier in her life, she went with Rome or Macintosh, along with Red and Yellow Delicious--she wasn't an apple snob at all.  I am a bit more of a snob, although I'll be happy with a bag of Red Delicious apples, if they're on sale.

--I also stopped at the Village Bakery, in its Fletcher location.  They had day old bread on sale, and I thought I had won the lottery.  Sure, I bake my own bread, but I didn't have any for yesterday's vision I had of bread and cheese and apples on the back deck.

--It was not as lovely last evening as it would have been earlier in the week.  It was chillier and cloudier.  But today may be better, and I still have all of the elements for a good snack/light meal. 

Poems and Chocolates and U2 on a September Tuesday Morning

It's been a strange morning, strange but satisfying.  I began it as I do most Tuesday mornings, by reading Dave Bonta's weekly Poetry Blog Digest and exploring some of the blog posts.  Rachel Barenblat's post includes an amazing poem, which made me weep.  It's the perfect poem for a week of shootings, and sadly, multiple shootings is a hallmark of almost every week these days. 

I also wanted to hear U2's "Shadow and Tall Trees," so I went to a YouTube site, and after each U2 song has come another.  But they've all been from the early years, The Joshua Tree and earlier--such powerful music!

Some of it I haven't heard in decades.  I'm getting deep cuts from the October album for example.  I remember it as an album that I bought and didn't really listen to much; I wanted to be listening to War, and so I did.  And yet, I remember the songs still.  I don't listen to music that way much anymore.

I am also struck by the way the lyrics twine together contemporary politics and ancient religious texts and concepts.  Wow.

As always, this music takes me back to earlier falls:  the autumn of 1983 when I first bought a lot of this music on vinyl (War and October and Boy), the autumn of 1984 when I had The Unforgettable Fire in constant rotation.  That music made me think of listening to my own recordings on cassette as I drove across South Carolina to see my grandmother in Greenwood, SC.

Those memories made me think of her Whitman's Sampler and the time I got one of my own, on sale, at a local drugstore, during the spring of my last year at Newberry College.  Finally I could eat as many of the chocolates as I wanted!  My grandmother only ate one at a time, spaced out across many days, making that box last as long as possible.  It will surprise no one that being able to eat as much of the box as I wanted in one sitting was not as satisfying as I always imagined.  Ah, the heartbreak of grown up life!

I've been trying to write a poem out of it all, and I'm a bit haunted by thinking that I've already used this material but I can't remember if I really have or if I thought that it would make a good poem.

I've continued with the poem composing, and I like this line:  Sugar soaked mouth unsatisfied

I've also done some sketching and noted the way a mostly dried up marker looks like tree bark on the page.  That, too, seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but in a different poem.

I woke up this morning thinking that I was going to blog about reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this past week, and being struck by how it speaks to our current conversation/argument about generative AI.  Frankenstein seems timeless in so many ways.  Last year I read it for a seminary class, and the isolation of all the characters was what grabbed me.

I feel so lucky to have this life, and I'm amazed that I managed to stumble into it, being able to teach undergraduates in a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, just up the road from my the small, liberal arts college where I spent my youth listening to U2 and reading British lit and dreaming of being a poet myself.