Alternate Apocalypse

Even though my friends tease me for my apocalyptic mindset, my ability to see dystopia lurking around every development, I am not always quick to see immediate, personal danger in world developments.  I remember a leadership team meeting in early February of 2020, when our college president mentioned this strange new sickness in China and maybe we should be thinking about how it might affect us.  I remember saying that it wouldn't be any worse than the flu (my first blog post about the disease is here, January 30, 2020).  I had been aware of various versions of flu and SARS viruses, and I understood worst case scenarios--in other words, I'm not a denier of any sort.  But still, I was the one downplaying the danger.

On September 11, I was getting ready to drive down to the University of Miami to teach my Brit Lit Survey class.  I was still at home, almost ready to walk out the door, with NPR on the radio, when I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center.  I wondered what part of the navigation on the plane could have gone so terribly wrong, or could it be engine failure?  And then the second plane hit, and I thought, what are the odds of that?

As I drove to Miami, hearing more information and then the Pentagon plane, I kept scanning the skyline for mushroom clouds.  I had spent my life expecting a nuclear attack.  I did wonder if I should turn around and go home.  But not only did I not go home, I taught my first class to the distracted students who came.  By the time of my second class, U of Miami President Donna Shalala had canceled all classes for the day.

I am sure I have mentioned much of this story before, perhaps in different combinations.  I've been blogging since 2008, and that's a lot of anniversaries.  It's hard to believe it's been 25 years.  My onground students weren't born in 2001.

As I think about these 2 historic events, the COVID-19 pandemic and 9/11, the pandemic probably changed more lives of more people I know personally than 9/11.  People made dramatically different decisions once they had gone through that time of pandemic crisis.  If I had been in NYC, if I moved in military circles, perhaps I would have had different experiences.

Or perhaps it has to do with the passage of time.  I do remember always having a gas tank never below empty and always having a case of water in the car.  I remember asking if my school had an emergency plan, and I did take note of various control panels in the building.   Those developments, though, were later, because that school was AiFL, and I didn't start that job until 2002.  I asked about the emergency plan during the days when the federal government would issue color coded threat levels.  Those memories have faded, but pandemic memories are still fresh.

I have always looked for the exits, no matter where I am.  I am the one who says, "If something happens, and I'm in Spartanburg and you're in Arden, we'll meet in Arden."  I'm the one who knows which location is best for surviving various dystopias.

I have been listening to various programs that look back on that day and how it changed us (I particularly like this podcast from The Dispatch).  This blog post seems inadequate.  So let me post a poem.  It's not a 9/11 poem, but a pantoum about preparing for the wrong apocalypse.  I wrote it in 2002 or 2003.

And of course, we haven't prepared for the "wrong"  apocalypse.  Global warming has accelerated, and the world is less safe from nuclear weapons now than we ever were in the cold war years.  History should teach us that unexpected apocalypses are always lurking.

Alternate Apocalypse



We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.
Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere.
Chunks of glaciers break for freedom and sail across the sea.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands.

Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere,
yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.

Yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.
Some years we have no winter.

Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year.
Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Some years we have no winter;
furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.

Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
Furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.
We see new diseases stalking continents.

Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We see new diseases stalking continents.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.

We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We feared nuclear winter, not this relentless warming.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.
We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.

Visions and Revisions

It's been a good week, but I feel behind, in the way that I often do once the semester gets underway.  I was shocked yesterday when I wrote in my bullet journal:  "Teaching Plans, Week 5."  Let me capture a few notes from the week:

Writing:

--This week's short story writing made me think of earlier writing I've done.  Very few of my short stories are in my folder of short stories to be sent out in hopes of publication.  So I went back hunting.

I have a few short stories that are set in a specified time:  2027 (the story was written in 2010 or so, but it didn't really need to be set in 2027, from what I could see) and 2076 (did I just have a yen to write a science fiction story?).

And then, I remembered:  I was creating a book of linked short stories.  It's a family saga, and these stories were written with the collection in mind, so I had to be aware of when the characters would have lived.

Now I think I'll take at least one of them and tinker with a new draft.  It will be more effective if the older woman in the hospital is the mother, not the mother-in-law.  I no longer need to explain what a smart phone is.  The revision won't take a lot of work, and I'll keep the original, in case a publisher ever asks me for a collection of linked short stories.

--I also did some poetry rough draft revisions when my two Creative Writing students needed to spend the class time writing.  I had printed the rough drafts in week 1, but never had time to look at them.

Commuting and the Fixer-Upper House

Today we will rent a drum sander to do the floor work.  Here's hoping it goes well.  Yesterday's commute reminded me of why this house was a good idea:  an accident hours before had shut down the interstate, in a place where there's really no other way around.  Our trip home took at least an extra hour, and I was so exhausted that I was dozing in the chair by 7:30 in the evening.

Department Life

We had a department meeting yesterday, and we went over course descriptions, some of which need some gentle revisions.  It was a collaborative vibe, so different from some schools.  I was startled to realize that I have some expertise (teaching experience and publishing) in all the types of classes we teach:  professional writing, creative writing, and literature. 

Teaching Life

My onground classes continue to be a delight.  Usually by week 5, there's at least one student, and sometimes a whole class, who I'm seeing as an aggravation, or one class that's so much more unengaged than the others.  But the chemistry of this term makes me think it may be one of my all-time best.

Quilting Inspirations: A Short Story Draft!

In later years, when I wonder why my blogging fell off a cliff in the past week, let me remember 2 factors.  Tech woes kept me offline or otherwise engaged for several days:  an internet outage one day, followed by my authenticator app not working and then being glitchy.

But I've also been writing a short story!  Once that sentence would not have merited an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, but I haven't written a short story since the piece I wrote for my seminary class in the late fall of 2024.

I had a glimmer of this week's short story during Quilt Camp--a woman who is more of a traditionalist being shocked when her old nemesis wins a best-in-show award at the Asheville Quilt Show.  I keep remembering the quilt I saw at the show which used tiny gear parts for flower blooms; it was a steampunk quilt (imprecise title).

Last week we had writing time in both of my creative writing classes, and I really enjoyed writing with them--and it helped to have an idea.  But then I wanted a finished draft, and by tomorrow, I'll have one.  Hurrah!

The Asheville Quilt Show and our summer Quilt Camp have been giving me all sorts of inspirations.  Just this morning, I thought about my Nancy Drew poem where she decides to go back to teaching (I put the poem in this blog post).  Over the next few days, I'll think about what happens if Nancy Drew decides to start quilting.

Post-Labor Day Shift

It has been an intense few weeks, book-ended by Quilt Camp on one end and Crafts for Christmas on the other end.  I made a quick trip to Columbia, SC for an overnight last Wednesday; I am trying to go once a month to see my grad school friend who had the catastrophic stroke 2 years ago.

I've had tech woes with the authenticator app which allows me to access my online classes, so I feel a bit behind.  That school has just switched its process for attendance verification, which has also left me feeling discombobulated.

It's been a good teaching time, particularly for my 2 Creative Writing classes.  Last week I had the class peer edit a short piece of mine; it's one of the few things I've written that works as both a short story and a piece of creative nonfiction.  Then we wrote together.  I brought my laptop, and I wrote too.  As a result, I have a new short story, one that came to me during Quilt Camp.  I still need an ending, but I expect to have that after I go on my walk. 

This morning, I also have that sad wistfulness that comes from knowing it will be some time before I see these friends again:  neighborhood friends, retreat friends, and grad school friends.  There's also a bit of overwhelm from a fixer-upper house that needs us to take the next step of refinishing the floors.  And there's the ordination overwhelm--I am doing an onground intensive in October, and I have some work to do beforehand, including a Zoom session tonight.

Let me go and walk and remember that all will be well.

A Nancy Drew Poem for Labor Day

Labor Day brings to mind many things for me.  I think of the ways this holiday has changed.  In my lifetime, Labor Day signaled a coming end to the intense heat, with only a week or two left.  But in our time of planetary climate upheaval, no longer.

Labor Day has also signaled fashion choices, like when to put away white clothes and sandals.  But we are no longer bound by these dictates.

Most people have forgotten or never learned about various Labor movements of the 20h century.  We have time off, most of us, in large part because of those movements.

I am thinking of all the workplace poems I've written, poems about workplaces and thankful that I no longer work there, and sad, too, because corporate types destroyed them.

So let me post a different kind of poem, about Nancy Drew, in her retirement returning to the public school classroom.  Nancy Drew wouldn't be teaching college. She'd have had a teacher's certificate from pre-feminist days. And they'd let her teach the kids that were headed to juvenile jails and drop out land--who cares about those kids?

When I wrote it, I thought about a friend's experience teaching those kinds of kids. She was allowed to do basically whatever she wanted, to abandon textbooks and to teach whatever came to her, so long as she kept the kids from hurting each other or the other children in the school.

I thought about Nancy Drew's friends, Bess and George--what happened to them? Could they help Nancy Drew solve the mystery of how to reach these students?

Of course! Bess has started a bakeshop and this generation of students, raised on cooking shows, eat up what she has to offer in the way of old-fashioned home-ec. George, the tomboy, has gone on to become a marine biologist, so she leads field trips into various ecosystems.

 This poem appears my third chapbook, Life in the Holocene Extinction.

Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Pre-Drop Outs



Nancy Drew decides she needs new
mysteries to solve, so she returns
to school, to mold young minds.

Long ago, in between cracking cases
involving diaries or letters or maps and solving
secrets in attics and towers, she got a teaching
certificate, as ambitious women did in those days.
Now she calls the school board to see
how she might be of use.

Her credentials, old and out of date,
don't prevent her from taking charge
of the most hopeless classrooms,
the students on a layover
on their journey to juvenile court.

Given tattered textbooks and worksheets without
answer keys, Nancy Drew adopts
a different approach. As always, she calls
on her friends.

Bess runs a bakeshop, so she teaches
the students to cook, a retro home-ec
approach. Nancy Drew's feminist critics
would not approve, but this generation
of students, raised on cooking shows, responds
with rare enthusiasm.

Nancy Drew believes in fresh air and sunshine,
so she recruits her friend George, a marine
biologist, for ideas. George leads
field trips to various ecosystems:
swamp walks and snorkeling and soon
some of the students are ready
for college-track science classes.

These clues to a better future don't prevent
some of her students from sneaking
away to explore more ancient secrets.
She tries to keep them focused on the future,
but she remembers Ned Nickerson
and those cars now considered classics.

She thinks of Ned in the roadster,
and later, her love confined to the hospital bed,
immune from rescue, unable to hear
her whispered pleas.

She kisses the old locket always worn
around her neck and writes the day's lesson
plan on the white board. At the end
of the day, she erases the smeared
lines from the board to leave a blank
space to be filled again in the morning.

Tech Woes, Famous Death Woes

Yesterday was a frustrating day.  On Thursday, I had trouble with the authenticator app that I have to use to get access to my online classes.  On Friday, I had the same trouble, so I thought I'd call the help desk early in the morning before everyone else tried to call.  So, at 4 a.m., I called, and at 5:20, I was able to explain my issue, and a ticket was created.  It left me frazzled all day, and feeling annoyed that I was letting tech troubles get to me.

I thought the problem was solved, but no, this morning, the app is not working again.  Later I will go up the hill to use Lutheridge's wi-fi, to see if the problem is my home wi-fi.  But other than that, I am not going to waste another day on this.

Yesterday afternoon the Crafts for Christmas retreat started.  I haven't had time to make a sample, so I made a small string of bunting.  We ate dinner, and then we did more crafting.  I was feeling tired and still a bit frazzled from the day, so I headed home at 8.  I am sure there were retreat friends that crafted all night.

Yesterday I put together a draft of a sermon.  I was sure it was terrible.  This morning, I read it and thought it wasn't nearly as awful as I worried it was.

Yesterday I had planned to write an appreciation of Gloria Steinhem, who died on Wednesday.  Like others who have died recently, she had a long life; she was 92 when she died.  For many years, I was a subscriber to Ms., the magazine she founded.  In pre-internet years, it was an amazing resource, with more global news than I was getting otherwise, with a wide diversity of alternate visions of what life could be.

This morning, I found out that Cassandra Wilson also died this week. There were several years in the mid to late 90's when I was in love with her voice and her music.  Her version of "Last Train to Clarksville" was revelatory--or so it seemed at the time.

I'm listening to it again as I finish this blog post, and while it may not seem groundbreaking now, it's because so many people have done similar work (taking an old pop standard and making it anew) in the decades since she did it.

I am ready to stop writing tributes--I am hoping for a few weeks with no notable deaths.

Now, let me get ready for another day--creating with friends, one of the best kinds of days!

Swiss Army Knife of the English Department

We've had a major internet outage in my service area overnight, so let me make a quick blog post in case it flickers out again.

On Monday, I made this Facebook post, which has gotten more likes than almost any other Facebook post I've ever made:

My department chair just said I am the Swiss Army knife of the department, in terms of being able to teach such a wide variety of classes, and I have decided this one may be my favorite job descriptor ever: Swiss Army Knife of the English Department!

My department chair is the one who just took over from the old department chair at Spartanburg Methodist College; that department chair took over when the chair who hired me got promoted to Dean of Humanities.

The all-time favorite blog post I've ever made, the one that got the most likes and loves, is the one where I announced I had just applied to Wesley Theological Seminary.  That was back in February of 2021, and it is rather staggering to think about all that has happened since then, both in my personal life, in the life of the nation, and the life of the planet.

Happily, I do not have time for a full catalogue of wins and losses.  But there is always time for gratitude that I found my way here to this small, liberal arts college,  where I am so lucky to have a tenure track job, with a Candidacy Committee who is supportive of my goal to be bi-vocational.