The Joys of a Purple Legal Pad and a Well-Stocked Pantry

There's a tent set up in my living room.  My laundry basket is full of Bey blades, instead of clean clothes.  A fleet of paper airplanes made from the pages of a purple legal pad waits for a mission; in the meantime, they're on a cutting board runway. 

Usually I write poems on the pages of a purple legal pad, so I have a supply.  My 6 year old nephew asked if he could have a sheet from one of the pads I have going, and I quickly decided the best idea was to give him a whole legal pad of his own.

Oh, the variety of things one can do with a purple legal pad!

There are the afore-mentioned paper airplanes.  My spouse did an elementary lesson in division to show the 6 year old how much allowance he'd lose if he had to replace the blow up mattress because he'd been jumping on it.  The 6 year old wrote a story about a guy who loses his jacket. 

Yes, he's been in first grade for a whole month, and he has amazing language skills.  I remember being in the first grade and feeling frustrated because I wanted to use a word with a silent e at the end (my terminology might be off here), but I knew we hadn't learned that yet, and I didn't want to get in trouble.  First grade has clearly changed.

And what's interesting, my nephew is at the middle of his class in terms of his language skills, but near the top in terms of math skills.  I've always seen the language skills in action, but less so the math.

We've also gone to the beach and had water hose fights in the backyard.  These activities left us both ravenous and tired.

I did a bit of planning and shopping, but yesterday, when we were planning to have hot dogs, I realized that I had no side dishes, not even any chips.  What to do?

I had a few apples, so I thought about an apple salad of some sort.  I decided on what we called a Waldorf Salad back in the 1970's.  I changed it a bit by adding some chopped carrots.  I had no raisins.  But I do have a stash of pecans.

So, pecans and chopped apples and chopped carrots held together by Miracle Whip--yum!  And not for the first time was I thankful for my well-stocked pantry.

And I'm also grateful for my wide variety of culinary experiences, so that I could make changes to the recipe, so that I could be inspired to have the idea in the first place.

Since there's a child in my house, I'm inspired to wonder how much of our creativity is rooted in childhood.  I've noticed that my nephew is capable of endless improvisation.  Grown ups see a box of dental floss, but my nephew sees the most fabulous potential:  a tool, an enormous amount of string, a box with magical powers, all sorts of marvelous stuff.

Where and why do so many of us lose our ability to improvise?  Where and why do we lose our childlike wonder, where a simple legal pad of purple paper only has one purpose?

Dreaming of Tuscany and Other Perfect Places

Yesterday afternoon, a friend dropped by my office.  It might have been nicer to go out for drinks and happy hour specials on food, but I was expecting a student to drop by with questions about her transcripts.  She never came.

The whole week has been like that.  Students show up with questions and a combative tone.  These are not questions about work I've done, mind you, but questions about transfer credit analysis done years ago or about grades given by others.  I calm the person down, explain what I know, which this week has not been enough, and then I explain that I need time to gather more information.  The student with the combative tone demands a follow-up meeting that will happen at a precise time, and I prepare.

And I never see them again.  Not this week, at least.

That's fine.  I have plenty of other work to do.  Or, in the case of yesterday, a friend to see.

She used to work at my school, but she's moved on, while staying in the area.  We talked about changing jobs, about how to decide when to stay or when to go, about moving to a completely different part of the country.

My spouse would happily stay in South Florida until the rising seas sweep him out into the Atlantic; hopefully, he'd have the foresight to have bought a boat.  I never feel quite settled anywhere.  We move, and I'm ready to think about the next move.

Part of me thinks it's best to stay here, since he's happy, and I'm not likely to be happy in that way no matter where we live.  Part of me still yearns for a dream job, or a dream location, or . . . gasp! both.

My friend and I talked about going to a place on vacation and immediately wanting to move there.  We laughed at ourselves.

The conversation reminded me of a poem that I wrote years ago, when everyone I knew was dreaming of Provence or Tuscany.  This poem was recently published in Adanna.


Tuscany Dreams



No one buys a suburban home
in Tuscany.
They buy old barns or sheep pens
or buildings of indeterminate
origin. In Tuscany,
the explosive wiring and undependable
plumbing seem charming
because it’s Tuscany.

No one thinks about transoceanic
flights or aging parents on a different
continent once they’ve bought
a house in Tuscany.
No one needs health
care in Tuscany. No one develops
rare diseases there.

No one mentions the cost of phone
calls to all the ones left behind in the move
to Tuscany. It’s all sun-drenched
colors and fresh foods, and no one suffers
homesickness in Tuscany.

Beach Weather in October

It is the time of year when I complain about the weather.  I used to start complaining around Labor Day, but most parts of the nation, where I'd want to live at least, have hotter Septembers than we used to have.

But October:  oh how I long for some crispness in the air.  We'd been having rainy weather, which drives my spouse crazy, but I love rainy days because it's not as hot.

Yesterday, however, it was quite steamy.  My brain thinks it's still July, and then, when dusk comes around 7, I worry about storms, only to realize that it's just getting dark.

Yes, I'm ready for cooler weather.  But I can wait for a few days, because my sister and 6 year old nephew arrive tomorrow.  I've told him that we've been getting the beach ready!

Of course, we don't want a beach that's too clean--how will we decorate our sand castles?

We will go to local restaurant legend, Jaxson's, where we'll eat ice cream sundaes as big as our heads.  We might also make ice cream by putting all the ingredients (cream, sugar, flavorings) into one plastic bag and putting that plastic bag into a larger plastic bag that contains ice and rock salt--shake for an impossibly long time (15 minutes), and you've got ice cream.  It's a great science experiment, and it's fun, and it makes delicious ice cream.

Or maybe we'll just plug in the ice cream maker.

Yesterday I bought Honeycrisp apples, the only kind my nephew eats.  They're astonishingly expensive, over $3 a pound down here.  Really?

It's a strange season indeed.  I can buy quality beef for less money than top quality apples.  And it's all shipped down here using large amounts of fossil fuels.

The world runs on dead dinosaurs.  How much longer?

The Midwest is still gripped by drought.  What will that do to our food prices in a year?  I probably don't want to know.

Well, back to planning for their visit.  The first year they came, my nephew was 2, and I scrubbed the house from top to bottom.  I was afraid he'd find a dead bug and eat it or something catastrophic.  That didn't happen.  Now I'll clean and straighten, but I likely won't have time to scrub.

We're supposed to have sunny, hot weather:  perfect for the beach, perfect for ice cream! 

Lessons from the Khan Academy

This morning, I listened to Salman Khan on yesterday's The Diane Rehm Show on NPR.  He had fascinating insights, both into his own experiences with online learning and with creative projects more generally.

In fact, when they interview new teachers for the Khan Academy they don't focus as much on credentials and test scores.  They ask what the candidate has created.   

Khan says, "To a large degree when we hire people at Khan Academy, yeah, test scores are nice and grades are nice and degrees are nice, but we say, what have you created? Show us your creations. Tell us how you thought about those creations. That is at least or far more important than tests. And the other dimension that I think is completely lost right now is how much do you contribute and how capable are you contributing to the improving the learning of those around you."

I was also struck by the accidental nature of the whole enterprise.  Khan began his foray into online learning not because of a love of education but because he had a cousin who needed some help. 

And from there, his online presence blossomed:  "And so then I started teaching -- working with her younger brothers, and you fast forward about two years, word got round in the family that free tutoring was happening, and I had this cohort of students. And I started writing software for them. That was my background, you know, giving them problems and see what they knew and what they didn't know, and so that I could make more tutorials more productive. And I was showing this to a friend, and I was kind of saying, this is great, and by this point I had moved out to Silicon Valley in Northern California, and I said it was difficult now, not that I have 10 or 15 of these kids around the country, and I'm trying to coordinate with."

That friend suggested that he upload videos to YouTube.  The limitations of YouTube shaped the future of the company:

". . . YouTube at the time, for a regular account, would only give you ten minutes for each video. So well, I guess I have to redo this thing. And so I redid it, you know, and I think it was like nine-and-a-half minutes and I uploaded it. And I did all the videos in that. And you could cover a lot 'cause you could do as many videos as you like. And one, I got feedback from a lot of people that, yeah, this is working for them. They're allowed -- it allows them to pay attention."

The shortcoming of the project leads to the success of the project in ways that couldn't have been anticipated in the beginning:  I love these kind of stories!

Even though he could upload longer videos now, he's realized (and research backs him up) that the shorter format has strengths that a longer format wouldn't give him.  And so, he's continued to make short videos.  And he's making history.

You can get to links to listen or read the transcript here here.

Dream Job #2: Why I Am Qualified to Chair the NEA

Ah, Wednesday, when part of our nation will be watching the first of the presidential debates tonight.  I confess that I likely will not.  It's hard for me to stay awake when the TV is on, even when we're watching something that's riveting.  Will this debate be riveting?  Time will tell.

Still, as the debates have approached, and with all the various job drama of my own setting, I've been thinking about various government jobs.  I have realized that I'm the perfect candidate to lead the National Endowment for the Arts.

Here's why:

--I'm used to working with no budget. 

--In fact, I'm so used to working with no budget that I have perfected the art of asking for money, being told no, explaining why it's important, being told no, and staying my charming self through the whole process.

--Not only am I used to working with no budget, but I'm also quite good at making amazing events happen even though I have no money.

--I have no specific examples to offer in proof of that last statement, but I'm a poet, so I'm sure it's true.

--Like Dana Gioia, I have been a poet who has worked in the belly of the corporate beast.  I am not a sheltered academic who has never had to think about profit margins or shareholder profits.  I am not an artist with a trust fund who has never had to worry about money.

--I shall take a brief moment while you recover from the laughing fit inspired by the words "sheltered academic" and "artist with a trust fund."

--Much of my life as an administrator involves saying no.  I imagine that much of my life as the Chair of the NEA would involve saying no.

--But I do delight in figuring out ways to say yes to worthy projects.  I love figuring out ways to say yes more often.

--I'm used to working with disparate groups of people, as the Chair of the NEA would need to be.  I imagine days of talking to Congress people, meetings with people who might fund grants, going to arts events.  That kind of day would make me happy. 

--I'm used to finding ways to get us to consensus.  I understand the importance of getting everyone's buy-in.

--I also understand that there will be times that consensus isn't possible.  I have learned to live with that.

--Some have called me "brutally efficient."  Some say this in awed tones, as if to offer me a compliment.  Some tell me this as criticism.

--Every organization needs one or two people who are brutally efficient.  It helps if the brutally efficient people have a visionary streak.

--On good days, I have a visionary streak.

--I'm not just a poet.  Various art forms appeal to me.  I understand that the NEA needs to minister to a variety of artists.

--I'm now solidly middle-aged.  I know how to dress the part of Chair of the NEA.  I will not show up looking like a bit player in a reality TV show with too much flesh on ill-advised display.  I promise to only wear my punk outfits in private or for Halloween.  I will not dress in ways that scare people.

--I'm not afraid of travel.  I would serve the whole U.S., and I'd be happy to travel to various parts of the country to talk about the importance of the arts and to discover what's going on beyond D.C.

--I don't need much sleep.  Or perhaps it would be more correct to say I've gotten used to operating on less sleep.

--I don't need much sleep or money.  What more do I need to say to convince you that I'm the one who should be your Chair of the NEA?

--I realize that I'm of North European descent, German and Scottish mainly.  I understand that it would be desirable to have a minority presence at the head of the NEA.  I am a woman, a different underrepresented group.  Perhaps that would be enough?

--I have friends and family in the D.C. area who could help me when it's time to move to D.C.

--I understand that we already have a Chair of the NEA, and I'm not suggesting that he needs to be replaced.  But all Chairs step down at some point.  When that happens, I'm ready to go at a moment's notice. 

Dream Job #1 and Late Life Job Fulfillment

One of the women that I know at the gym is an avid reader.  I enjoy talking about books with her, even though we only have a few minutes in the day to do it.  The other day, I said, "That would be my dream job, reading whatever I wanted and writing about it."

She said, "Working for a publisher?" 

At the same time, we shook our heads.  "You'd have to read so much bad stuff," I said at the same time as she said, "The slush pile!"

"No," I said, "I want to read what I want to read and write about it once or twice a week.  And to get paid $150,000 a year.  If I'm gonna dream, why not dream big?   And I want to go to a conference or two a year, with expenses paid."

And then I spent the week-end rereading Phyllis Tickle's Prayer is a Place.  I read it years ago when it first came out.  At that point, I had just recently discovered her 3 volume version of the Liturgy of the Hours, The Divine Hours.  I was fascinated by her discussion of the writing process.

This time, I noticed how much of the book revolves around Tickle's post mid-life career.  She has a full career as an academic, teaching and being a dean.  Around the age of 45, she quits those paths to found a press that has multiple focuses and is fairly successful, especially as small presses go.

Then, around age 58, she gets the call that will change her life.  She's asked to be the editor-in-chief for the soon-to-be-created religion section of Publishers Weekly.  She gets to read books, meet authors and publishers, and go to huge festivals and conferences.  In short, she has my dream job.

And here's what made me most hopeful:  she got that dream job late in life.

We're surrounded by stories of young stars.  We're inundated by stories of Ph.D.s that have an expiration date.  We're swamped by stories of mid-life and later job seekers who can't find anything.

I loved reading Tickle's memoir because it reminded me that those stories are not the only stories.  A world of stories exists where people find that doors open when they need to, that a human that you knew briefly decades ago will come back into your life when you need that person, that there's a shape and a pattern to life that isn't just chaos theory and apocalypse.

I also noted that Tickle often felt like she needed more and more writers.  She recounted one story of hiring a woman who sent her an unsolicited resume and that woman became one of her strongest employees.  Note to self:  don't discount sending off my resume/CV/information to places where I'd like to work, even if there are no published openings.

And then, even later, she wrote The Divine Hours, the project she considers to be the reason she was put on the planet.  It's been wildly successful.  It's not a project that anyone would have forecast to be wildly successful, but several people had a shared vision, and thus, success.

Literary historians might remind us of many similar trajectories, especially when we consider the path of women writers and artists of all sorts.  Just because you haven't produced your most successful work by the time you're 25 doesn't mean that you won't.  Lots of people have done their best work at midlife and beyond.

It's important to remember that point, as we move into the Autumn awards season.  The MacArthur Genius grants have just been announced, and it's a fascinating list of people and their interests.  Soon we'll have the Nobel prizes.

You might be like me; these awards might lead to painful introspection, to that infernal question, "And what have I done with my life?"  My answer changes from day to day.  On days when I've redone an assessment report for the 5th time or revisited the schedule yet again, on those days I feel most like I'm in a play authored by Beckett, a play which mocks the idea that life can have meaning.

But on days when I write a good blog post or carve out a poem from interesting ideas, those days are good days.  On days when I help facilitate some sort of reconciliation, those are good days.  On days when I assist in developing workable solutions to real problems--those are some of my favorite days.

I wonder if those problem solving days come after a morning of good writing?  I've never kept track, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

And it's important to remember that MacArthur grant recipients don't always/often start out with their genius recognized.  They often labor in obscurity or isolation.  They devote themselves to subjects that others have rejected as useless.

It's not about winning a grant.  It's about following the passion.

Lessons from a Local Disconnected Week-end

I’ve always known that when I’m on vacation and away from the computer, I get more reading done. That observation makes sense to me. Much of my reading has migrated to the Internet, after all. I only read a newspaper that’s on paper not pixels when I visit my parents. I only subscribe to paper magazines which will provide good collage images.


However, I’ve also noticed that when I’m on vacation and away from the computer I sleep later. I feel more relaxed. Is that because I’m on vacation or because there’s no Internet?

On Thursday, we realized our phones and Internet were gone. We called (hurrah for cell phones) and were told we wouldn’t have service until Monday. A technician showed up yesterday, but sure enough, the two main cables were fried, and they’d need to be replaced. Hopefully that will happen today.

But in the meantime, it’s been a peaceful week-end. I did sleep later. I read a whole book, which I rarely do in a single week-end anymore—unless I’m on vacation. I went for a run on Sunday morning, which I rarely do at home.

I thought we might get out and do more around town, the way we do when we’re on vacation. But because we’re at our house, there are still chores that need to be done. I got errands run. My spouse and I tackled the yard—which got a thorough edging and mowing; we’ll usually skip the edging if it’s just one of us doing it.

It was also a peaceful week-end in the neighborhood. As summer moves into autumn, more of our neighbors resume their outdoor life, especially during football season. Several neighbors haul their televisions into their back yards, where they grill and listen to music and watch the game and get increasingly louder as they get drunker.

But not this week-end. So, we enjoyed our backyard: we mowed and then we grilled each meal and then we watched evening come and the full moon rise.

I didn’t leave the computer entirely. I typed in some poems, and I worked on a short story. I’m sure I made more progress on the short story than I would have if I was also able to blog. It was strange not to be able to use online sources to look things up. I used a dictionary—the old-fashioned, door stop of a book kind—to look up a word or two.

In short, with every task I undertook, I noticed I was less distracted and less irritable. Is that because I go more sleep or because there were fewer Internet tasks or because we stayed home instead of zooming all over the county?

It was a good experiment, even if it wasn’t one of our choosing. It’s good to realize how out of sorts I can get when I’m too plugged in. It’s good to remember the different kind of life I might have if I could disconnect more.