The Week Where A Clone of Myself Would Be Nice

This week is one of those weeks where I had more than one of me.  I'm looking forward to teaching the autumn themed writing module I've designed; yesterday I stopped at my favorite apple orchard to get a bushel of Pink Lady apples.  But the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA is having their continuing ed event here at Lutheridge.  I'll be doing a bit with that group; in a half hour, I'll head up the hill to camp to lead a morning walk.  I wish I had more time.

Even as I wish I had more time, I know that only some of the continuing ed would be relevant to me at this moment in my professional life.  The ELCA isn't geared to those of us who are bi-vocational.  Much of the support that the ELCA gives to clergy assumes a traditional clergy member who serves one congregation and doesn't hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet.  Or worse, it assumes that the clergy member is managing a staff of people at a church that has plenty of money.

And even though I know these things, when I see pictures of continuing ed events with lots of clergy folk having inspiring times, I want to be with them.  And similarly, when I see writers at events that look inspiring, I want to be there.  And when I read about successful teaching, I want to be creating modules that will do the same.

And so I try to do it all, sort of.  I could say that I do none of it well, but that's not true.  Could I do it better if I only had one thing to focus on?  Maybe.  Or maybe I would be bored and stop trying.

I also wonder what it's like to only want to do one thing, to focus on that one thing, to have no alternate lives tugging at the hem of one's garment.  I've gotten better at not obsessing over decisions already made, roads not taken.  But I'm not as good at settling down into my current life.  There's some part of me always creating alternate plans.

By now I realize that those plans will be useless.  Far better is my skill at pivoting when things need to be different or when something falls apart.  Perhaps that pivoting skill comes from my lifetime of alternate life Kristins tugging at me.

Well, let me get ready for my walk.  I've got only one self to be all the places where I want to be.  Let me enjoy it.

My Next Novel

At some point in the past few weeks, probably last week, I had this idea for a novel.  Now I've written novels before:  written them, revised them, but never published them.  I feel that some of them were good enough to be published.  The last one I finished in 2005, revised through 2006, but never actually sent it to publishers or agents.  I knew I wouldn't have time to promote it properly with the new demands of my job.

I've been writing short stories, most of them which could be linked into one or more collections.  And that's similar to writing a novel, in the way that I, the writer, make discoveries about characters and plot and place, and I have fun making all the connections that would have to be made in book of linked short stories.

But it's not the same as writing a novel, as staying consistent with the narrative arc of just one or two characters--at least the way I wrote my linked story collection was not.

At some point in the past few weeks, I saw a Facebook post from an old college friend.  I thought about 19 year old Kristin, who planned to live in an intentional community committed to social justice.  But what did I do?  I went off to grad school--a different kind of intentional community.

My friend, who also shared my dream, actually went ahead and joined an intentional community.  I had forgotten that detail of her life until her Facebook post.  I can't for the life of me remember how that part of her history ended.  Maybe that will turn out to be a blessing.

I have a vision of a novel with 3 characters, all female, all who have gone to the same, small liberal arts college and respond in different ways.  In my writing, I have transformed my undergraduate school, Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina, to Crabapple College in Crabapple, South Carolina.

Much the way that Harper Lee captured a particular part of the U.S. South in a particular time, I would want to do that for a small South Carolina college town in the 1980's, as the Cold War was winding down, but we didn't know that yet.

Or maybe, I'd want to be even more ambitious.  At one point, I seemed to be unable to write about any character older than 25.  What would happen if the novel moved back and forth in time?  What if part of the book explored the midlife of these characters?  And by midlife, I mean age 45 or 50. 

I am interested in the many ways we live out the dreams of our adolescent selves, but in ways those younger selves would not recognize.  Could I write a novel that explores that?

I think I could.

A Trip to the Health Department

One of my default positions, when I was unhappy with life, was to think about returning to school--longtime readers of this blog might argue it's still one of my default positions.  In the past, I've thought about public health, but long ago, people who went into public health could look forward to a career of contacting people's sexual partners to let them know they were at risk of a disease.  What kind of job would that be?

Yesterday I went to the Broward County health department to get a tetanus shot.  I haven't been to a county health department in decades.  In fact, the last time I went was probably the last time I got a tetanus shot, the summer we were married, 25 years ago. 

I've been meaning to get a tetanus shot since our disastrous hurricane season of 2005, which showed that even if you're not expecting to do home repair or be exposed to dirty metal, it could happen.  But I haven't gotten around to it.

I've spent the last several weeks helping with home repair, being acutely aware of rusty nails and all sorts of metal points waiting to do injury to me.  On Monday, when I noticed blood running down my leg, I decided I should not procrastinate any longer.

You may wonder why I didn't just go to my primary care provider.  I don't really have one.  Last year, I asked my OB/GYN if her office did tetanus shots, and she said, "No.  But we should."

I was happily surprised to find out that the county health department still gives shots, and that they'd be delighted to give one to me at low cost at the walk-in clinic.  So on Tuesday morning after boot camp class, I headed on over.  I put my name on the list and waited.  I'd brought a book, so it wasn't so bad.

Alas, waiting rooms these days are full of screens, and at times, I couldn't concentrate.  I found myself enchanted by this public service announcement, which made me want to start a midlife career in public health.  But I suspect it would still be depressing.

After all, I was in a place with a children's dental clinic and eye charts on the wall.  You could get a complete set of immunizations.  I pretty sure that for many poor residents of our county, this walk-in clinic is as close as they get to having a primary care doctor.

Will that change with the new health care legislation?  Florida's Republican governor has been doing all that he can do to make sure that it doesn't change.  And that approach makes me so sad. 

I saw so many young parents who clearly just want the best for their children.  What was more sobering was the fact that for most of the morning, I was the only white, non-Hispanic person in the clinic.  Not for the first time was I struck by all the intersections between race, gender, and class--and where poverty strikes.

Eventually, I got my tetanus shot and a band-aid and was on my way.  All day, I was struck by how many people asked me if I had gotten a flu shot--another indicator of class status?  But down here, why get a flu shot?  We rarely have outbreaks this far south.

Of course, many of us travel, so perhaps a flu shot isn't an extravagance.  And many of us are surrounded by those disease vectors known as children.

I spent the day trying to not sink into discouragement.  I tried to envision a more just world, where public health departments wouldn't be necessary, except to keep a watchful eye on possible outbreaks of disease.  Yesterday was one of those kind of days that threw all kinds of challenges to my usual sunny nature.  Perhaps I'll blog more about it later.

Or maybe I'll just keep hoping for a world where children get their shots, and parents have good jobs, and the U.S. government raises the debt ceiling and doesn't send the U.S. into default.

Blooming Where I'm Planted

Yesterday was a 12 hour day at work.  I had to sub for a colleague in the morning, go to an afternoon meeting, and stay to ask for volunteers to move from a Tuesday night class to a Wednesday night class.  In some ways, it was exhausting.  In some ways, it was nourishing.

I loved subbing for my colleague.  In these days of the ability to teach from a distance, I'm not often asked to sub.  But this week is the first week of classes, so an online module wouldn't have really worked.  So, my colleague and I devised a plan, and it went really well.  At the end of the class, one of the students said, "This was a really good class.  Thank you."

I was on my way to my afternoon meeting, and a student stopped me.  She really wanted to see me to ask why certain classes hadn't transferred.  I, too, was mystified since I hadn't done the analysis work with the transcript.  Happily, it's an easy fix:  I just file some paperwork.

The student got tears in her eyes when I told her that I could help. She said, "Could I hug you?"  And then she did.  She told me she'd been having such a bad day and told me some details.  I said that I hoped her day was turning around.

I helped a few more students with transfer credit issues yesterday, and I'm glad I did.  If I hadn't, I might have focused on the teaching experience and wondered if my life was trying to tell me something.  It's good to remember that I'm important in other capacities too.

I tend to think that my administrator life consists of herding e-mails and other paperwork.  I look at our assessment activities and wonder why it matters.  I try to solve problems, only to find that for every one problem I solve, ten more sprout up in its place.

It's good to remember that not all of my administrator work is pointless.  And even when I feel hopeless about those activities, my emotions may not point me to the truth of my work life.

Along the path of my 12 hour day, I had interesting conversations.  In the morning, I talked to a colleague about my recent blog posting about transforming churches and other underutilized spaces into artist studios and galleries.  She reminded me that my writing is important, even as we talked about the church building that's for sale, the building that I see every day on my way to work.  Later in the day, I had a wonderful lunch with a colleague who will have a book coming out later this month.  It's good to remember that I'm surrounded by wonderful colleagues.

I got home to discover that our Amazon order had arrived.  My spouse came home early from Chorale practice; this week the women stayed to practice their parts, which means that next week he'll be late.  We settled in with our new books.  He read his barbecue books, while I devoured half of Nadia Bolz-Weber's new book, Pastrix:   the Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint.  What a wonderful book!

It's the kind of book that makes me want to buy a hundred copies.  I want to press it into the hands of people who say that Christians are hypocritical; I'd say, "Yes we are, but that's OK.  Read this."  I want to give the book to people who say that Lutherans have forsaken art for intellect; I would say, "That might have happened along the way, but not everyone is like historic Lutherans.  Read this book."  I want to give this book to all my atheist friends, even though I know that they might not make their way through it.  I want to give this book to all my friends who are searching yet not sure that there's a place for them in a church.

Again, I'm glad I had the kind of day that reminds me that I'm blooming where I'm planted.  Otherwise, I'd read Pastrix and wonder if I shouldn't be planning for seminary instead of staying in my comfortable position.

And to be honest, I still wonder that.  I had a colleague who asked me if I'm place-bound, and I said yes, but not in the way that people usually mean.  If my job vanished, we wouldn't have jobs that held us here.  But my spouse flourishes here, and there aren't seminaries nearby.

And then there's the issue of debt, which I'm not eager to take on.  So, I'll continue pondering and waiting for my church to catch up with me.  Why must ordination mean such expense?  Why are seminarians and their families expected to uproot themselves so thoroughly?  I know of two programs that make some concessions, and one of those is only for the first year.  Sigh.

And in the meantime, I'll continue to work here, in the tropics, doing what I can to make my garden blossom.

Vows of Stability: Good to Be Here in This Place

We have just enjoyed a whirlwind visit--24 hours--with my spouse's dad and step-mom.  What a treat!

I rearranged my work hours on Tuesday so that I could be fully present.  I know how lucky I am to have a boss who lets me do that.

We spent hours relaxing in between fixing meals.  We got caught up on family news.  We did some creative play with alcohol inks, our newest creative toy.  We went for a walk at the beach after dinner.  We enjoyed an ice cream extravaganza at Jaxson's in Dania.

Why is it so easy to do these activities when we've got out of town visitors and so hard to remember to enjoy the delights right outside our door when it's back to regular life?

Part of it is that I do have to exercise, to do certain chores, and go to work.  But I wonder what might happen if I approached every day with the resolve to do one thing that reminds me that I live in a delightful place.  It's so easy to let the drudgery of daily life overtake me.

I've been wrestling lately with my longing to be elsewhere.  Even though I know that if we picked up and moved, I'd miss this place intensely, I still find myself looking at other parts of the nation.  I want a little farmstead in the Blue Ridge.  I want a place that's more like a real college town.  I wonder what it would be like to live in the middle of a metropolis, like Manhattan.  I want to go back to school, debt be damned!

I am drawn to monastic practices for many reasons, but one of the things I admire most about monastics is their vows of stability which means a commitment to place.  Sure, I say, it's easy to be committed to place, when you've got a wonderful monastery and beautiful grounds, like at Mepkin Abbey.

But I have a beautiful place here, full of galleries and amazing public libraries and museums and goodies of all sorts.  I have the Everglades to the west and the Atlantic to the east.  What more could I possibly want?

Sandra Beasley has been thinking about the delights of her hometown, Washington D.C., in this blog post, and she's been strategizing about how to better utlilize what's there and what to create to make it better.

I read her post, and I feel this longing to move to a city where I could build a life that's closer to what I had in mind as the ideal.  But lots of elements of life that I love are right here, just a short walk or a car trip away.  I'm not going to find a place that has both mountains and beach and a cheap farmstead that I can buy--all in the middle of a big city.  If I did have a farm, I'd grow tired of the chores and long to have time to play with alcohol inks.  If I made a living as a writer or a farmer, I'd spend untold hours worrying about the next writing project or the next harvest and all the things that could go wrong--just as I do with my current job.

It's been a good morning.  I've made cookies for a festival of desserts at work tomorrow, I've written a poem based on yesterday's blog post where I talked about poems carved of stone vs. poems with bits of pie dough stuck to them, and I did some revision work on my memoir.  I'm getting some laundry washed, even as I type.

As they said in ancient communities, it is good to be here in this place.

April, when We Long to Go on Pilgrimage

On Friday night, before the Hobo Code Poetry reading, we talked about the whole hobo ethic.  One friend completely doubted that ANYONE would have chosen that life.  She said that the Great Depression FORCED people into that life, which was true of a certain segment of the hobo population.

I said, "Haven't you ever wanted to just sell everything you own, buy an RV, and take off to see the nation?"

One friend (the doubter) looked at me in horror, while the other nodded enthusiastically.  She pointed out that I'd be travelling with a house, essentially, so I'd be sheltered in all sorts of ways that hobos weren't.  She said, "And you wouldn't be stopping to work."

I said, "Maybe I would.  I would stop at the Laura Ingalls Wilder house and get a job where I'd show people around."

And then some hilarity ensued as we tried to imagine what we'd say.  "Stand at this window and close your eyes and experience the blindness of Mary.  Run your fingers across this braille."

Does such a place exist?  I don't know, but I'd love to work there, if I needed a bit of extra cash.  Me and multiple generations of women who read those books as girls.  Or maybe it's my inner drama major who wants a job where I can dress up in a costume from a different time period.  Or maybe it's because of the brilliant episode of Parks and Rec that I saw on Thursday night when Leslie made a bet about who could last longest living the way that people did in the 19th century.  It was hilarious.

Laura Ingalls Wilder became one of those topics that we returned to throughout the night.  One friend is reading the series again.  I found myself envying her.  Of course, I, too, own the series; I could read them all again.

What I'd really like is to read more about the Ingalls family.  I've gotten some sense of the reality of their lives, as I've come across more facts about that time period and the westward expansion, and I've written a bit about that before on this blog.  For example, when I was young, I was so angry that I had missed the time of the Homestead Exemption when I could have gotten a chunk of land for free had I just managed to farm on it for 5 years.

In later years, I'd learn how hard it was to do that:  60-70 % of Homesteaders failed, either because they couldn't make the land produce or because they died (harsh disease, harsh weather, harsh natives) or because they fled back to the East because of the intense hardship or the intense loneliness.

So yes, I'd buy that RV and go on the Laura Ingalls Wilder trail.  Again, does such a thing exist?  Probably not, but it should.  I think of all the authors who have influenced me who have come from the Dakotas.  What does it mean that I LOVED Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child, and then, in my early 30's, I LOVED Kathleen Norris?  I could perhaps write an interesting essay, academic or popular, about the Dakotas sensibility and its influence on American writing.  But I won't do that right now.

My spouse is still under the spell of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove and would love to follow the path of that cattle drive--but without the cattle.  Instead of an RV, he'd like to do it on motorcycles, the modern answer to a good horse.

But for now, I have a job that pays well and provides benefits, so I won't be buying that RV or a pair of motorcycles.  It may well be the last full-time job I ever get--full-time jobs seem to be disappearing from the landscape the way that buffalo once did.  I'll read the Dakota writers whom I love and satisfy my wanderlust that way.

Of Kathleen Norris and Inspirations/Dreams of All Sorts

Last night, we had dinner with friends.  After dinner, talk turned to our creative projects and our hopes for the future.

The friends come from a social science background, and in some ways, a more rigorous academic background.  I got through my Ph.D. program without having to do any math, for example.  They can tell great stories about compiling statistics before there were such helpful computer programs.

I know more about the current state of publishing and writing than they do--I'm not sure that any of us can predict the future of academic publishing.  Academic publishing interests them more than it interests me, although every so often, I dabble in it.  Of course, the academic publishing that I do seems easier to me--no pesky statistics to compile--just me and the literature I want to analyze.

We talked a bit about blogging, but it's clear to me that I'm the only one who blogs and reads blogs, and thus the only one who thinks blogging matters.  I talked about all the raw material I've collected in my blogs and how I might transform it into a memoir.

One friend was dismissive.  He said, "Forget your blogs.  That writing is done, and it doesn't matter.  Just you and your thoughts about whatever was happening that day.  Who cares?  The important question is what do you have to say to people reading now?"

In a way, he's right.  In a way, he's not, because he hasn't read my blog and doesn't really know what I'm doing here.

We talked about memoir, which is hard since I'm the only one reading memoirs.  I tried to explain what I hope to do with my memoir:  "I hope to be the Kathleen Norris of my generation."

Then I had to explain who Kathleen Norris is and what her books are like.  I'm not sure I convinced anyone to go to her work, but it was good to clarify what I'm trying to do.  Of course, it's easier with friends who have read Norris.

My friends are not real open to the idea of spirituality or Christianity; they remind me of Christopher Hitchens in their objections.  But we had a good discussion of living one's values in the current work environment.

My friend who was dismissive of blogs said, "That's the first idea I've heard that's really made me excited tonight.  But take spirituality out of it.  Instead, maybe do something with values in the workplace, the values of the workplace."

I want to record his idea, because it gives me a way to conceptualize how my memoir might be important even to non-spiritual, non-religious people.  I suspect we're all working in an environment that's not exactly in sync with our values, at least not all the time.  We all wrestle with what to do when the expectations of our work environment clash with other expectations which are important to us.

We also talked about promotion, both of the shameless self-promotion variety and others.   We talked about ways to promote our work that wouldn't feel like bragging.  I had a moment of insight, when we talked about the differences in promoting different kinds of work.  If I can think of my memoir as a tool that will help others to live better, richer, fuller lives, it will be easier for me to tell others about it.  I want to make sure I remember this technique.  It's an idea which isn't new, of course.  But it felt like an epiphany last night.

My goal between now and Epiphany (Jan. 6)--to go through the blog posts that I've assembled into one document.  Those are the blog posts that I thought might be useful in the memoir.  It's time to begin the sifting and winnowing process so that I can start the revising process.  Also, I need to see what I have so I can plot out the new writing that I will need to do.  By this time next year, I will have a finished manuscript that will be making its way into the world--that's my ultimate goal.

And my ultimate wish?  I want a bidding war when publishers see my manuscript.  I want a book tour that leads to lots of readers discovering my book as a resource that will improve their lives and workplaces.  I want new opportunities, ones that I can barely discern right now, to open because of my work.  I have a vision of retreats, of new educational settings, of recurring columns in magazines, of clamor for my next work.

I'm tempted to erase that paragraph that I just wrote, but I will leave it.  I worry that it makes me sound too grandiose, too full of myself.  But I also think it's important to articulate these wishes, to send them out into the universe.  I do not want a memoir that disappears into the ether. 

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. 

Collage: Soul Cards and Career Insight

The other night, instead of going to spin class, I went out with a colleague who's moving from full-time faculty to part-time.  Her income will be cut dramatically.  She's faced this before.  She taught at our school in the early 90's, in the hospitality program.  When that program was cut, she went back to school, got another degree, always with an eye to returning to teach in the institution that she loved so much.

She always said she wanted to teach here until she was at least 78.  I suppose she still can.  She just won't be paid as much.

That evening, we had the kind of storm clouds that made me turn off all the electronics when I got home.  My spouse was at Chorale practice, so I had lovely time to myself. I wrote in my paper, off-line journal. When I was done with that, I was tired, but I still felt like doing more creating.  My collaging supplies caught my eye, and so I sat down to create what I'm calling soul cards.

 I use liquid glue instead of glue sticks.  When I create images with glue sticks, they don't have the kind of permanence I want.  But, as you see in some of these pictures, liquid glue can leave ridges.

I've been keeping a repository of images:  each time I throw away a magazine, I cut out appealing pictures and keep them in envelopes.  So I began the process by looking through saved images to see what leaped out at me.  I assembled my images and grouped them and started gluing.

The process is similar to that of making vision boards, except instead of finding images of what I want to attract, I'm taking images that appeal and trying to figure out my unknown/little known yearnings.  I think of them as soul cards, rather than vision boards in miniature.  What does my soul want?  What does my soul know?  How can I tune in?

When I look at the card below, am I yearning for a new house or time on a porch or rest of all sorts?

I was going to stop at 3 cards, but then the words on the card below leaped out at me:  "Stay Hopeful," "Peace also takes courage," and "Finding answers."  Not much mystery there.

There's one thing that came to me in my journaling the other night that I want to make sure I record in several places, so that my subconscious begins to chew on it.  When I think about my future, my brain seems to go in three tracks:  writing, academia, and something to do with a spiritual life.  Any of these might require going back to school.

But what if my brain goes to those 3 because that's where I've trained it to go?  What if I might discover other possibilities, if I assumed that any avenue was open?

I'm not sure how I go about breaking out of my brain rut, but I plan to try!

When the World Sends Writing Assignments

I've been somewhat amazed at the good writing news coming my way.  Late August and September is usually a time of submissions for me, not a time of getting good news (because I've only just started submitting to journals and periodicals for the Fall reading period).

But since I got the phone call that told me of the restructuring at my school, I've gotten an abundance of good writing news.  I've gotten an assignment from my editor at The Lutheran, my editor of Living Lutheran, and Her Circle.  I've gotten several acceptances of individual poems, some from journals which have never chosen my poems before.  Hurrah!

I've gotten some other positive feedback too.  When brainstorming with people about what might come next, many people have talked about specific writing that I do and asked if I had ever thought about ramping up those efforts.  For example, I've shown that I can write blog posts regularly and about a wide range of topics.  More than one person has asked if I've ever thought about doing more with blogging.

Yes, yes I have.  Right now, I like writing blog posts better than just about anything else that I write.  Could I be paid to do that?

Yes, I know, I hear the negative message that often comes up at this point in the conversation:  no one would want to pay me to write simply what I want to write.

Well, that's not necessarily true, and even if it is, the trick would be finding the people who would want to pay me to write about the topics to which my brain regularly returns:  academics, teaching ideas, theological writing, cooking, reviews, creativity, historical events and figures.  Hmm.  Let me think on that some more.

What kind of sign would I need from the universe?  What kind of sign would tell me that I could make a living with my writing?

I'd need some regular money coming in.  I heard the writer Steve Almond talk at the 2011 AWP convention.  He said that what kept him going as a writer was his monthly column for Martha Stewart Living.  That column paid regular money, good money, money that he could count on.  I want to say that he told us that the column paid $1000.  That would be a good base.

He was writing about topics that delighted him, like the joys of candy.  He didn't have to force himself to write about topics that were horrible to him.

So, although I do have enough paid work that I pay taxes on it, I don't have enough that I do without my day job.  A gig or two that paid $1000, that would be a sign from the universe.

I've often wondered what kind of book contract would offer a similar sign.  What kind of advance would I want to have?  What would I need to have to say, "OK, it's time to leave my office job and commit to the book"?  Several hundred thousand would be nice.  Perhaps not realistic, but if we're going to dream, why not dream big?

Discernment Begins

At work, we've had two years of bad news:  student enrollment in decline, lay-offs every 6 months, reorganizations, and the ever-more-precarious state of post-high-school education.  I work at a for-profit college, and the for-profit higher ed industry has been facing stresses that other kinds of schools don't have, like needing to have an ever-greater profit margin for share holders even as we've been enduring the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. 

At various points, people have asked me what I think will happen.  Will the school close?  Will there be more lay-offs?  Will we reverse our enrollment numbers?

I have always said, "We can't know.  All we know is that as long as the lights are on and our keys unlock the doors and the paychecks clear the bank, we have a job to do."

Yesterday, on the last day of the quarter, I got to work, and the doors were locked, and the lights were off.  For one minute, I said, "The school has closed for good."  Then I saw clusters of humans, and I thought, it's a bomb threat or a fire.  But the lights were off, which made me think, maybe something dreadful has already happened, and we're not allowed back in the building--something done by a disgruntled student or soon-to-be-ex-employee?

Nope--just a massive power failure.  And I'm trying not to read too much into it.  I'm an English major, after all, always able to see signs and symbols.  I remind myself that sometimes a power failure is just a blown transformer.

Eventually I went back home, where I had power and Internet access and a computer.  And then, in the afternoon when the power was restored, I went back to the office.

Last night, my department gathered for a happy hour event that was bittersweet.  We're losing 5 department members because of our Reduction in Force.  Some will be back as adjuncts, but some won't.  And regardless, our department is changing, soon broken into two units.

We drank our happy hour specials.  We ate wonderful happy hour food specials.  Some people stood in line for the roast pig.  I did not; the presence of a head with eyeless sockets kind of freaked me out.  I decided to continue eating $4 piles of fried calamari.

We started at the outside bar that tries to make you believe you're on a Caribbean island, when, true to the tropics, a huge storm blew through.  We were fairly sheltered, but given the instability of the weather, we decided to move inside when the rain let up.  The inside is light and airy too, and air conditioned which was good, since it was hot and muggy outside.

We toasted each other and shared memories and started to face the future. 

In terms of my personal finances, I feel like I've been granted a temporary reprieve.  A temporary reprieve is better than no reprieve, but I feel like there are many signs that it's time to plan for what I would do if my job no longer existed.  The obvious answer:  save more money. 

But I must do more than that.  I plan to enter a time of dreaming which I'm hoping will lead to concrete planning.  I want a time of discernment.  I figure that I'm at the halfway point of my working life.  What would I like the next 25-30 years to look like?

I'll write about some of that process here and at my theology blog, in case it proves useful to people.  It won't be the only thing I write about, of course.  But it will be a subject to which I return periodically.

A month ago today, I got the call from my dean, which I wrote about here, the call which told me of the restructuring that I have survived.  In the next few days, I'll write about some of my discernment that I've done in the past month and some of the things I've already learned.  I need to write some of it down, while I'm still remembering. 

Living in Trouble, Living in Love

Last night, I was feeling anxious, and it took me some moments of analysis to understand why.  I'd been deep in Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing, and it took me awhile to surface from the book.

I don't read every Lippman book; some sound a bit too intense for me, and some are closer to the straight mystery novels that I don't often read.  But this one sounded good:  people who were friends when they were children in the 1970's, a dark secret, insights into both modern life and the past.  And it is good, but the dark secret from the woods haunts not only the characters, but me too, the reader.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that the secret that seems to be the secret is not the real secret.  I'm 3/4 the way through, and the darkness begins to pull closer.

I was listening to Alan Cheuse's review of Joyce Carol Oates' latest short story collection on NPR's All Things Considered.  Rober Siegel introduces the review this way, "Alan Cheuse finds this batch of stories a big step into darkness."

I thought, A big step into darkness?  A darker direction than the usual Joyce Carol Oates' world?  Yikes.  I remember seeing the movie, "Smooth Talk," based on Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"  That depiction of the manipulated teen-age girl still haunts me.  Oates has always depicted the world as dangerous and dark.

Cheuse ends his review this way:  "In her fresh, direct, energetic and often shocking prose, she bestows life wherever she turns, excavating in what first appears to be ordinary ground and discovering that to live means to be in trouble."

I've been thinking about fiction, more specifically, what makes good fiction.  Compelling reading comes from the kind of crises faced by characters living in trouble, or dancing with trouble, or meeting trouble in the dark woods/fast cars.

So far, when I've written novels (so far, all unpublished, thus available!), my characters fall in love.  With my last novel, I declared, "No love stories!"  But my characters went and fell in love anyway.

As I think about the future and possible writing careers, perhaps I should think more seriously about my tendency towards love stories.  After all, romances still sell.

So far, I haven't written the traditional kinds of romances that keep their authors from having to get a day job.  My romance plot lines tend to also wrestle with sexual identity, age discrepancy, artistic obsessions--none of which are parts of the traditional romance genres.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I don't use those themes the ways that traditional romance novelists have done.

Even in the 50 pages of a historical novel I started writing, sexual identity and gender issues worked their way in.  The novel was set in the Civil War in Charleston, SC, a time when I figured that women could be a bit more free and leave their gender roles, since the city was in smoking ruins.  And I threw in a female pirate who dressed like a man (based on a true historical figure!) for good measure.

I may return to that novel some day.  The Internet leaves me better equipped than I would have been in 1994, when I first started writing it and quickly got stymied by questions of what was the furniture like back in 1864 and other details of daily life.  It was easy to determine the big questions of war:  who fought when and how was the city barricaded.  It was more difficult to determine how women would have lived that history on the ground.  Diaries and journals gave me a sense, but at the time, if a comprehensive analysis of civilian life during the Civil War existed, I wasn't able to find it.  Now I suspect the problem would be just the opposite:  too much information.

I still have that novel in my head. Maybe it's time to get it onto paper/pixels.


I'll probably return to writing that historical romance and curse my migratory self.  I started writing it after a January of expeditions when we bought "Be a Tourist in Your Hometown" passes.  Because it was off-season, we got to see all sorts of historic homes and plantations that I never would have paid for otherwise.  Those excursions inspired me in all sorts of ways.  When I started writing, I always thought that I could go back if I needed to check on any information or be inspired anew.  Now, those historical spots are much further away.

But they're still within driving distance, and I still have good friends in the area.  Maybe the Piccolo Spoleto Festival will invite me to read my poetry, and I can create a trip with multiple purposes!

Directed Writing Insight: Focus on the Memoir!

A week ago, I'd have been in the North Carolina mountains to help plan the Create in Me retreat.  We met from late afternoon of September 9 to lunch on September 11.  It's amazing what we get done with an intense focus--it's a good lesson to remember in all areas of my creative life.  I do tend to get a lot done in little chunks, but I should probably make arrangements for a few more times of intense work throughout the year.

I was in charge of devotion time in the morning, and since I didn't know I was in charge until I got there, we did it differently:  no Bible expert giving insight.  No, the first day we did a guided writing assignment and the next day we did a lectio divina experiment.

For more on the exact process of the guided writing, see this post on my theology blog.  We did a variation of a writing assignment that I've often done with my students.  I have my students write to themselves in the voice of their 80 year old selves.  For the group last Monday, we wrote in the voice of our spiritual mentors.  First we thought about places where we needed to be rekindled, either individually or as groups, and then we did a free writing.

Free writing couldn't be more simple.  All you do is write.  You keep writing.  You don't stop, you don't go back, you don't edit:  you simply write what bubbles up.  If nothing bubbles up, you write "I have nothing more to say" over and over again until you have something more to say.

Those of you reading my blog know where I need to be rekindled.  You may have insight that I don't have.  I've been very focused on my job and the future.  Even now, when I've gotten a position in the new, reorganized institution, I'm still seeing it as a temporary reprieve.  The state of higher education overall is shaky.  Many call it the next bubble that's about to pop (like the tech bubble, the housing bubble, all our bubbles).  So it's wise to continue thinking about what comes next.

When I started writing last Monday morning, I thought I might get wisdom about going to seminary.  I had stayed up extra hours on Sunday night talking about seminary.  I thought my free writing might lead to insights about where to move.  After all, moving is my default response to knowing that something needs to change:  pack up and change locations, either locally or across the states.

We wrote about what needed rekindling, and then we started free writing with this prompt:  "What would your mentors say to you about rekindling?"

Here's what I wrote a week ago:  "You've got any number of paths you could follow.  God will make you useful wherever you are.  You can likely do what you want to do without uprooting everything.  Write that memoir.  You want to reach people--that memoir is how you will do it.  People have said that your writing style is like Kathleen Norris'--follow that path.  I cannot stress enough how much people need your words, how urgent it is that you attend to this memoir."

For those of you saying, "Memoir?  What memoir?", go to this post which will explain what I plan to do.  Basically, last spring I realized how few of the memoirs I've read talk about work life in conjunction with spiritual life. I've read plenty of self-help books that claim to do so, although none of them have been useful to me in the ways that I wished they would be when I picked them up.  And then there's the issue of being an artist and being at midlife.  My plan is to write a memoir that weaves all these strands together.  I will organize it by the calendar year.  I'll strive to make it a collection of essays that can be read each one on its own, but of course, my hope will be that the whole collection will be more meaningful when read all at once, that it will be so compelling that people won't be able to put it down.

When I started my free writing, I hadn't been thinking about memoir at all.  As I say, I'd been thinking about going back to school or finding a dream job.  But memoir writing?  I would have said that memoir writing had been far from my conscious thoughts.

I've always found these free writing exercises to yield interesting insights.  Last Monday was no exception.

I return renewed.  I will finish sorting through possibly useful blog posts in the next month.  I will go to Mepkin Abbey with a sheaf of pages, and I will begin the process of taking all the rough work and turning it into something cohesive and meaningful.

 

Choose Your Own Labor Adventure

Another Labor Day, with the whole day off--what better time to think about labor, my own and others?

Or maybe I want to think about how strangely I'm being forced to think about the future right now.  It's a very post-modern place I've inhabited for the past week:  I have to act/plan as if several possible futures might occur.

Most simply, I may or may not have my job in a few weeks.  I've decided I won't start planning aggressively until I know about the outcome of my application for a variation of my current job.  But in the meantime, I still have some decisions to make.  I've got staffing to do.

Yet it makes no sense to make staffing decisions.  Several of the people staffing classes have applied for these new jobs.  Each decision could have an impact on the schedule of fall classes, specifically who is teaching what.

I'm living in a choose your own adventure kind of text (if Penny and Sue decide to enter the cave, go to page 15; if they get on the spaceship, go to page 44).

In the meantime, I'm getting several versions of my job search materials ready, another kind of choose your own adventure text.  If I'm applying for creative non-fiction jobs, I'll put this material earlier on the CV.  If I'm going down the administrator road, I'll move this chunk here.  If I'm hoping for a poetry job, I'll go into more detail here, less there.

At the same time, I'm playing with other ideas.  Could we have a real adventure?  Buy a sailboat and see what happens?  Take off to see the country in an RV?  How long could we make our savings stretch?

Could we make art that would sell?  Could we be the rare Etsy success?

Is it time to think about school?  Could we find a cheaper program?  I don't want to take on debt that's equal to my retirement savings, just to get a degree that may or may not bring in money.

And before I go too much further, let me take a moment to think about how far I've come, since the last time I was thinking about alternative career choices in the near future.

The last time I was seriously on the job market was 2006 or so.  Back then, I only had one chapbook published, but now I have 2.  In 2006 I had not started blogging yet; now I keep 2 blogs, and I'm also a paid blogger at the Living Lutheran site.  I've been paid for my writing:  prayers and religious meditations and magazine articles and being a poetry judge.  That hadn't happened in 2006.

I've done more literary readings and presented more at conferences, but I'd done some of that in 2006, so those activities are a continuation.  But I've also been a conference organizer for the past few years.  Long ago, in college, I organized a conference or two.  Organizing a conference uses many of the same skills as being an administrator.

In 2006, I had no idea that I was about to take this department administrator path.  I'd been an adjunct coordinator in the mid-90's, which was a similar position.  But in 2006, I firmly believed I was in a school where no one up the ladder would ever go anywhere, and thus, there would be no job openings.

Now, I look up the job ladder, astonished to see that everyone except for 1 person in administrative positions above me was not in administrative positions in 2006.  All but 2 are new to our school since 2006.

It's interesting to think about how my CV has changed since 2006; it's also interesting to think about how the trajectory has been similar.

Those choose your own adventure stories train us falsely.  In real life, just because we went to page 52 doesn't mean we're stuck on that path.  We can go back to page 8 and make different choices.  We can pick up a different book.

Of course, I meet many people who are stuck, but mainly because of their own attitudes:  "What if that school wants a freshly minted Ph.D., and they discover how old I am?"  Or we're stuck because we don't want to move.  We have families and houses and pets that keep us firmly rooted in place.

But again, I think that's false.  It's our brains that keep us rooted.  It's our brains that can't think in terms of alternative futures, our brains that can't hold several possibilities at once.

Maybe it's time to go back to read those choose your own adventure texts.  Maybe it's time to write some for grown ups.  When we were young, we could think of a future where we'd perform on Broadway and hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine and join an intentional community that helped rescue Central Americans from repressive regimes and write three novels and create 2 quilts and create a farm that was also a retreat center.  That was my particular choose your own adventure text circa 1984-1986. 

That girl still exists in my brain.  She's a bit rusty when it comes to contemplating multiple possibilities at one time.  But she still has that skill.

Define Creative Non-Fiction Please

My dad always told us that we should keep our resumes circulating, even if we liked our current jobs.  He said we'd be sure to have a current resume if we always kept one in circulation, and besides, you just never know what might happen. 

I've seen enough people of various generations laid off to know that's good advice.  I've kept my job search materials up to date, and when I'm bored, I'll peruse the job ads.

I found this one yesterday for an assistant professor at Towson University in Maryland:

"Position: Creative Non-Fiction Writing specialist. Sub-fields may include lyric essay, free-lance writing, editing, prose style, memoir, and/or rhetoric. Candidates must possess a demonstrated commitment to teaching and evidence of an active creative agenda, generally shown by a book or several significant journal publications."

If this position sounds interesting to you, here's the full posting:  http://careers.insidehighered.com/towson-university/assistant-professor-english-creative-non-fiction-writing-specialist-cla-n-2610/job/436398

Here's an interesting question for me:  what constitutes a non-fiction writing specialist these days?  I'm assuming that it's a much broader field than it used to be, back when only a handful of journals that published creative non-fiction essays existed.  But would someone like me fit their idea?

I'm a paid blogger, after all; I've had 26 blog posts at Living Lutheran.  I've had 4 essays that were published in The Lutheran, a magazine with a circulation of 280,000.  Would those publications count as "evidence of an active creative agenda"?  I think so.  Would the job search committee?

I've also written prayers for Bread for the Day for two years in a row.  In my mind, prayers are a whole different category, but they go with the other devotional material I've written.

Once upon a time, I wouldn't have dared mention anything religious in a job search.  Lately, however, it's impossible to ignore that religious writing still has quite a market, unlike other kinds of writing.  I've written all sorts of stuff:  poetry, essays, fiction, all sorts of short pieces--but the religious writing has paid much more than the others.

All that other material might count in my favor, I'd think.  And of course, it's easy to show I possess a demonstrated commitment to teaching.

I have a friend who would read this ad, or any ad for an assistant professor position, and she'd assume they would rather have someone straight out of grad school.  I'd ask her how a recent grad student shows a commitment to teaching.  She'd say that most grad students do some teaching while in grad school.  She may be right.  I taught at my university and at the local community college while I was in grad school.  I'd have told you that I possessed a demonstrated commitment to teaching.  

But now, 20 years after completing my Ph.D., I'd say that I have an even deeper commitment.  I've taught a wide variety of classes:  writing classes of all sorts, literature classes from the beginning to the upper level classes for majors, creative writing classes of all kinds.  I've not only taught, but I've created curriculum.  I've created whole programs.

I look at these ads and think, maybe they'd like someone who knows what she's doing and who has had a lot of unique experiences.

It's interesting to daydream about the future with people, to see how we react.  The idea of going back to school thrills some, but not others.  I have friends who have multiple small businesses they'd love to try, while other friends want to make sure they keep their health insurance.  Some of us still hold out hope for a dream job yet others are hoping to limp along until retirement on whatever they can piece together.

I'm the one who dreams of returning to school as a student in a different program while also holding out hope for that dream job.  But which dream job?  I have more than one . . .

Porch Reading

A week ago, we'd have been coming back down to sea level.  My spouse drove down the mountain, much of the way in neutral gear.  It was early on a Sunday, and we were the only ones on the road--why not see how fuel efficient we could be?

Throughout the week, I have missed this porch:

I have missed the peace that comes from unplugging.  I have missed the cool breeze whispering across the mountains.  I have missed the hours that I had to read last week-end.

First I read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  I'd have rather read The Martian Chronicles, but my colleague REALLY wanted me to read her copy of Fahrenheit 451, so much that she brought it to work and pressed it into my hands.  So, I did.

Much as in high school, I liked it, but it will never be my favorite Bradbury book.  I loved the ending, the vagabonds on the highway, the exiled intellectuals, the ones who have memorized books.

Then I turned my attention to The Bucolic Plague.  What a treat of a book!  A gay couple from Manhattan stumbles across a derelict but beautiful farm for sale.  It's only 4 hours away from their Manhattan apartment.  They can be gentleman farmers!  While keeping their day jobs that pay them so well! There's a quirky town nearby!  And you can well imagine that there will be goats, and there will be chickens, and there will be vegetables.

What sticks with me:  these two men had lots of talents and resources.  Yet when their Etsy type goat soap business takes off, they, too, have trouble filling orders.  When I think of the kind of do-it-yourself kind of alternate lives I want to create, it bogs down at the supply side.  Once, when I was really enjoying making baby quilts, I thought about how many I'd need to sell in a year, just to cover my very most basic living expenses and my supplies, if I quit my day job.  I knew how long it took me to make a baby quilt.  I did the math and determined that even if I had the demand for all those baby quilts, I'd have to quilt 12-15 hours a day to make enough baby quilts.

There is absolutely nothing I like to do so much that I want to do it 12 hours a day, every day of the week.  Nothing.

This book both made me want a farm of my own, and reminded me of all the ways that having a week-end farm 4 hours away is tough.  It would be tougher for me:  my family income is considerably smaller, for starters.  I can't be sure that I would find the competent caretaker that they did.

Then I turned my attention to Blood, Bones, and Butter.  I loved parts of it:  the growing up in the 1970's, the kindnesses shown to her by grown ups in Europe contrasted with the grimness of the youth hostels, the starting of her own restaurant.  The end left me with more questions than answers.  Was her marriage saved? 

I've never had any illusions about cooking for a living.  I like to cook for myself and the people I love.  But I see being a chef as a grueling job.  All those hours on one's feet!

I do love reading about cooking, about farming, about restoring houses.  I do love reading books, like Bradbury's, that make me appreciate my current life.  I do worry that at some point I'll look back at my current life with wistful sighs.  I hope that my future life contains even more delights than my current life.  But my summer of apocalyptic reading cautions other outcomes could come crashing down on our heads.

Kickstarter is SO cool!

When it comes to technology, I'm not usually an early adopter, but I do know of at least some of the developments happening out there on the frontiers.  It often takes me awhile to get over my fear of being the last adopter, the one who makes the investment just before it all changes.

Lately, it occurs to me that one can never be early enough--it's all constantly changing.

I've heard about Kickstarter, but I never really explored it much, until last week, when one of my favorite folk music duos, Alathea, launched their Kickstarter campaign to fund their next CD.  I have loved the duo's do-it-yourself ethos, the travelling across the country by themselves, the stories of the mountain cabin where the magic of music composition takes place.  Their concerts are wonderful, and they're the kind of group who hangs out afterward the show to talk to people, the kind of group that's thrilled to meet their fans.

In short, they're the kind of artists that I really want to see succeed.  I'm living vicariously through them--or perhaps more accurately, Alternate Life Kristin is out there on the road with her mandolin punk band, and thus, I'm drawn to them.

I've bought their CDs way in advance before, as a way of helping them fund their projects, so of course I had to check out Kickstarter.  I thought I'd just be pledging money, but it's so much cooler than that.

There are prizes!  Or perhaps, more accurately, a system of increasing incentives.  You get the CD, of course.  But you can also get homemade jam.  Or a whole breakfast basket.  Or they'll record a song of your choice.  For a much larger investment, you can join them in the studio when they record.  Or have them do a house concert for you.

I must confess that I'm dreaming of the mountain getaway:  "THE ALL-INCLUSIVE MOUNTAIN GETAWAY: you and your family OR up to 3 friends: Stay in a 2 bedroom cottage 1/2 mile from the cabin, hike trails, wade creeks, see waterfalls, eat hippie food with us and local favorites from the diner (twice-fried donuts), campfire with s’mores and music, chicken chasing, and a personalized photo book created by Mandee to remember your trip (travel not included)."

I've loved the Kickstarter idea since I first heard of it.  I love the idea of being able to support projects this way.  I love the idea of being able to offer support at different levels.

From the artist's side, it feels harder to think this way.  I'm used to thinking of do-it-yourself projects strictly from a how-much-do-I-need-to-save angle.  But if I offered people a way to support the project from the beginning, not just a product at the end, what kinds of graduating incentives would I want to offer?

Like I said, so far my brain is not thinking this way.  I think of projects that are perhaps too big:  help me create a retreat center that focuses on the intersection of spirituality and art!  Or projects that might be too small, although there are plenty of small projects on Kickstarter.

I'm glad this seed has been planted; I'll give my subconscious some time to ponder.  I think that people like to be involved in this way.  I think it's good to give people this kind of outlet.

Again, if you want to support a cool, young folkie duo, go here.  Don't wait too long--you've only got until 11:22 a.m. on August 16.

Glassified/Classified

Last week, when I was doing my "research" on the Savannah River Site, I wrote down the word "glassified."  Maybe if I had been doing real research, I could have retraced my steps and found the word again.  Maybe it never existed.

As I was Internet zipping (as opposed to research), my brain decided that a new method of storing nuclear waste had been invented at the Savannah River Site:  glassification!  I thought, I'll have to come back to that; I want to know more.  I had this vision of waste being trapped in glass, which of course, is much more stable than metal containers, which can rust.  My brain stored all these "facts."

But then I went back to several sites and couldn't find the word "glassified" on any of them.  I couldn't find much mention at all of new methods of storing nuclear waste.  Old methods, sure.  But not new.  And certainly not a glassified strategy.

I think that since I wasn't reading carefully, and certainly not researching, my brain transposed some things.  You've probably figured out by now that I saw the word "classified" and read it as "glassified."

Now that I'm writing all this, I want to go back to double-check my double-checking.  Can I really have gotten so much wrong in such little time?  Or is it there, buried somewhere, but when I went back to double-check, I simply couldn't find it?

And the larger question looms for me:  how much else have I gotten wrong, but never realized it because I never went back to double-check?

And my poet brain loves the word "glassified."  I didn't use it in the poem that I wrote about the Savannah River Site.  I wonder if I could use it in another way.  Maybe in my collection of linked short stories, in the short story that will be set further in the future when interplanetary travel is easier.  Oh, yes, I will use it there!

Alternate Life Kristin, the one who is a jewelry designer in a different universe, also schemes.  Could you stabilize nuclear waste in a glass pendant?  Plutonium in a pendant?  I have a vision of an amber colored glass, shot through with red.

Have no fear!  I'm not a jewelry designer, and even if I was, I know enough about nuclear contamination that I wouldn't incorporate nuclear waste.  Artists are threatened enough with their regular art supplies.  Why introduce known carcinogens?

I bet lots of people would buy plutonium pendants, though.  I have a vision of a Marie Curie line of jewelry.  Or cosmetics.  No, not cosmetics.  Surely people wouldn't paint plutonium dust on their eyelids.

Would they?

A Sane Woman Dreams of Turing Machines

The title for this blog piece is a riff on Jana Levin's book title A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.  It's one of those titles that both delighted me when I first heard it and made me sick with jealousy wishing I could come up with something so wonderfully evocative.  I first heard her speak on the Speaking of Faith NPR show (which is now called On Being); you can listen here.

On this day a hundred years ago, Alan Turing was born--it's one of those births that would change the world as we know it.  He's one of the men who did the work that led to our modern computers (originally called Turing machines).

Would someone else have done the work had he not done it?  Probably.  But he did it when he did it, and so much would be different if we had had to wait for others to make the some discoveries and connections.

I've written before about computers and how they've intersected with my history and the larger history of the world, so I won't rehash that.  But I thought of it again, when yesterday the tech guys showed up in our quiet office to replace the computers.

I have an intuitive understanding of the computer that my colleague, who is of an older generation, does not.  Part of that understanding is because I have used them more.  I've also dabbled a bit with programming, way back in the BASIC days.  I went to college with people who were fearless about taking apart their Commodore computers and soldering the motherboards into new configurations.  Many days I wish I had continued down those roads.

But there are many creative paths I didn't follow.  Sigh.

Today is also the anniversary of the day when Title IX was signed into law, another development that changed my life in ways I can barely articulate.  We tend to think of Title IX as being about sports, but it was about so much more.

We live in a time period where more women are going to college than men--or if we're not quite at that point, we will be soon.  Even though pay rates are not yet equal, if we look at raw demographics, in my circles, it's not uncommon for women to be making more than men to whom they are partnered.

Are we all OK with that?  I know partnerships that are existentially threatened, while I know of others where the men are cheerful and happy that the bills are being paid.

Title IX has yet to change our landscape completely:  note the lack of women in the fields of engineering and computing.  Yet that might be more about our school systems than about how we treat genders.  Alas, we don't have the pre-college school infrastructure in place to train lots and lots of engineers, scientists, and computer designers.

It's strange to me that I went to school in the 1970's and early 80's, not exactly a high water mark for public education--or at least, it didn't seem to me at the time.  Yet we had computers to program back when they weren't cheap.  We were encouraged to explore all sorts of areas:  home ec, shop, art, computers, sports.  We dissected actual animals in actual Biology labs and created all sort of potions in Chemistry lab.  We took field trips to see local universities doing productions of Shakespeare and Ibsen.

Ah, the joys of the days of no high stakes testing!

I was also very lucky to have my parents.  My dad encouraged my interest in computers and sci fi and helped me survive shop class, which I had to take, despite my lack of interest and terror of power tools which has never receded.  My mom was happy to let me cook and bought any ingredients I requested--except for saffron which was ungodly expensive.  They both encouraged my interests in running, nutrition, and vegetarian cooking.  For parents born in the late 1930's, they were surprisingly free of gender role expectations.

So today I will raise a glass to Richard Nixon, who managed to accomplish much towards making us a more open society, both because of and in spite of his paranoia and bitterness.  Today I will raise a glass to Alan Turing, another deeply tortured man who catapulted our culture to a completely different place.

Today I will raise a glass to my parents, and I'll continue to wish that all kids could have parents who support and love them in ways that nurture them fully as individuals.  In this day after various convictions in high-profile child sexual abuse cases (the Sandusky case, the monsignor in Philadelphia), I'll continue to yearn for a world where children do not suffer in this way or in any other way. 

Some quotes to inspire you, despite your strange summer weather (we're very rainy down here in South Florida, while the Pacific Northwest is cold, and the Atlantic coast has been oddly hot while the West is on fire):

Here's a quote from Levin's A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines:

"I am here in the middle of an unfinished story. I used to believe that one day I would come to some kind of conclusion, some calming resolution, and the restlessness would end. But that will never happen. Even now, I'm moving toward a train. My heart is thumping. My lungs are working. There is a man, a woman, a bench, the glasses, the smooth hair, an umbrella. We are all caught in the stream of a complicated legacy — a proof of the limits of human reason, a proof of our boundlessness. A declaration that we were down here on this crowded, lonely planet, a declaration that we mattered, we living clumps of ash, that each of us was once somebody, that we strove for what we could never have, that we could admit as much. That was us — funny and lousy and great all at once."


Here's Levin talking about the fact that we are composed of earlier generations of stars:


"For instance, let's say somebody said that they had a belief system in which it was simply posited that carbon came out of, I don't know, a blue sky one day. That wouldn't make me feel any more meaning about who I was in the world. It feels much richer to me to imagine that a cold, empty cosmos collapses with stars, and stars burn and shine, and they make carbon in their cores and then they throw them out again. And that carbon collects and forms another planet and another star and then amino acids evolve and then human beings arise. I mean, that's, to me, a really beautiful narrative."

When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be an astronomer.  Listening to Levin say the following made me wish I had followed that plan:

 "Our convincing feeling is that there should be no limit to how fast you can travel. You just go faster and faster and faster. Our convincing feelings are based on our experiences because of the size that we are, literally, the speed at which we move, the fact that we evolved on a planet under a particular star. So our eyes, for instance, are at peak in their perception of yellow, which is the wave band the sun peaks at. And so it's not an accident that our perceptions and our physical environment are connected. And so we're limited, also, by that.


That makes our intuitions excellent for ordinary things, for ordinary life. And that's how we evolve. That's how our brains evolved and our perceptions evolved, was to respond to things like the Sun and the Earth and these scales. And if we were quantum particles, we would think quantum mechanics was totally intuitive. And it's not intuitive for anybody else, but we would think that things fluctuating in and out of existence or not being certain or whether they're particles or waves or — these kinds of strange things that come out of quantum theory would seem absolutely natural.

And what would seem really bizarre is the kind of rigid, clear-cut world that we live in. So I guess my answer would be that our intuitions are based on our minds, our minds are based on our neural structures, our neural structures evolved on a planet, under a sun, with very specific conditions. So we reflect the physical world that we evolved from. So I guess — I guess the bottom line is that our intuitions are good, our intuitions are good . . ."

Technology, Time and Nostalgia and Punks in Literature

This morning, I listened to an interview with Jennifer Egan--fascinating!

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I waxed rapturous after reading her 2010 book, A Visit from the Goon Squad.  I wasn't the only one; the book won several awards.

In that book, Egan does interesting experiments with narrative, approaching it from a linear aspect and fiddling with the linear aspect of narrative.  This book will likely be remembered as the first book to successfully use a PowerPoint presentation as short story. 

In her interview, Egan talks about time and the illusions that surround time.  She also offers intriguing insights into technology.  She says that she taught a college-level class last year precisely to find out how college students approach technology.  She was surprised to find out that today's college students feel they're different not from older people, but from younger people when it comes to technology.  After all, today's 14 year old never really knew a world without Facebook.

Egan also pointed out that when she was in her early 20's, the greatest technological invention of her time was the answering machine.  At first, the answering machine doesn't seem like such a leap.  But remember what it was like when you couldn't leave a message or know who had called when you were away from the phone.

She quoted Steve Jobs, who said the greatest technological innovations were ones that allowed us to control time, like VCRs, which free us from relying on others for narrative.  We can go back and forth in time.We can pause to do something else.  We're that much closer to understanding late-20th-century Physics!

 This past week-end, I got lost in a different book about punk kids:  Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints.  What a great book, although it's very different from Egan's.  It's densely textured, and while like Egan's book, it does show people from different time periods interacting, in Henderson's book, it's grown up (though not always mature) hippies and their punk offspring.

The book is like a time capsule, taking us back to the late 80's, in New York City and Vermont.  It's a time when AIDS was a death sentence.  It's a time before New York City got cleaned up and safe.  It's a time when an artisan could still make a living selling blown glass bongs.  It seems like a million years ago.

It's also an interesting window into a subsection of punk culture, the straight edge punks who give up alcohol, drugs, and sometimes even sex.  I can't think of any other work of fiction that has taken us so deeply into that world.  In fact, I can think of very few works of any kind who have done what Henderson does with this book.

Long-time readers of this blog know that one of my Alternate Life Kristin fantasies involves a band of some kind, so it makes sense that I would love this book.  Again, it seems to depict a world that no longer exists, when a band needed $500 to press a record so they'd have something to sell at concerts.  Technology has obliterated that requirement, although the selling of merchandise will probably never vanish.  We have any number of ways to get our creative work out there now.

So, if you're looking for a great interview that will enrich your intellect, head to the Egan interview.  If you want to get lost in a great novel about punk, pick up Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints.  Then you can read Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad to see what happens when punks grow up.