Friday Fragments: Positive Student Evaluations and Poem Creating

Yesterday was much easier than Thursday--but that's not a surprise.  Yesterday we only had one meeting, so my committed time was only one hour.  Thursday was very scheduled, from 8 a.m. until 3.  Let me capture yesterday:

--Here's the one cool thing that stands out.  We had our Humanities division meeting, and we entered the classroom door that had colored pieces of 8 x 11 paper posted around the door frame.  On each piece of paper was a different student evaluation with a positive statement about teaching.  Our dean told us that she chose a positive evaluation for each one of us and put the comment on the paper.  She wanted us to remember that the work we do is important.  What a great way to start a meeting!

--The meeting was a good one, full of good brainstorming about ways to keep students from leaving us.  We'd like to grow our bachelor degree programs, and we'd like to keep 1st year students from dropping out.  Unlike some administrator meetings I've attended in pre-pandemic days, there was no administrator blame in the discussion of retention.  Refreshing!

--Yesterday morning I was going back through old blog posts trying to remember the pre-first day of class schedules of past years.  I came across this blog post that reminded me of eating ice cream with my parents a year ago and this post about aging bodies and this post about watching the news with my dad a year ago, and a first line for a poem came to me, and I followed it.

--It's not the first time, and it won't be the last time that I've been grateful for my blogging practice.

--This morning, before Saturday sermon writing, I'm trying to finish the rough draft of the poem.  It revolves around three T.V. shows:  Back to the Frontier, a nightly news show, and Little House on the Prairie.  It involves ice cream and habits and the way we may never escape our younger selves in our family constellation.  This bit may be my favorite:

We return to earlier incarnations
of our relationship. My mom
counts the calories in the bowl
and comments on how much thinner
we would be if we dumped
the ice cream down the drain.
Because I am now a grown up,
I resist the temptation
to eat the whole carton.

--I have been making lots of progress on quilting projects.  I've been sewing in the evenings, as we've watched TV--it's a delightful way to end the day.

Midway Points: Inspirations and Revelations

I am grateful to have been blogging for so long, grateful for many reasons.  I often go back to re-read old blog posts--by often, I mean at least two or three times a week.  I go back to see what I was thinking/doing, to find recipes, to find rough draft ideas and inspirations, to spark my brain when I feel I have nothing new to blog about.  This morning I found this blog post about a poem idea I forgot I had for a poem called "The Holy Spirit Takes a Holiday"; I haven't finished the poem, now, a year later, but I still have the rough draft.

This meandering made me think about a summer project, making a rough draft into a finished draft each week.  And yes, that's one of my new year's aspirations that has fallen apart as the year progressed (this January blog post has details about my specific intentions for 2026).  But that's the joy of early July--there's still time to adjust my trajectory.

Speaking of inspirations, during my driving to the grocery store yesterday, on NPR's Fresh Air, I heard an interview with romance writer Kennedy Ryan.  She's the first African American to win the RITA, the highest romance writing award.  I started thinking about romance novels and wish fulfillment and the voices and faces that aren't characters in romance novels.  I thought about older women characters who might get one last shot at their dreams coming true.  Romance novels need an obstacle, and the inability to see oneself as romance worthy could be that obstacle.  Another potent one would be that one dream is coming true, and the inability to believe that multiple dreams could come true at once.

If I wrote romance novels with older female protagonists, I'd approach it as alternate life Kristin explorations.  But I was also attracted to this idea, from yesterday's interview, about creating an imaginary town, a place that becomes an escape, like all those clergy novels of the 90's.

Before I head out on my morning walk to beat the coming heat, let me also record this snippet from last year's blog post on this day:  "I wonder where we will be at the halfway point of next summer. Hopefully I will be meeting with my candidacy committee to proceed to endorsement, which is usually a halfway point to ordination, but in my case, I'm doing things a bit out of order. At Lutheran seminaries, students would do CPE much earlier, often in the summer after the first year, and then they'd get to endorsement sometime in the following year, before internship (year 3 of seminary) and the last year of seminary."

Last year Kristin had no idea how much would have changed and for the better.  My candidacy has now transferred to a different synod, which means I can progress towards ordination more quickly.  A year ago, I was expecting to have to do a part-time internship which would last two years, in addition to needing additional seminary classes, which would mean that summer of 2028 would be the earliest I could be ordained.  Now I am on track to be ordained in the first half of 2027.

Last year Kristin had hopes that she might get a tenure track job at Spartanburg Methodist College, but she would have assumed that it probably couldn't happen soon.  And now I am an Associate professor on the tenure track.

This morning, I'm feeling a bit fretful about the electrical work happening at our S'burg house--we bought all sorts of fixtures thinking that the installation was included in the expensive cost to rewire the house, only to be told we'd get an update on Monday.  Does this mean a proposal/invoice, as it sounded on the phone with the scheduler?  Or just an update on timelines?  It's tiring.

Tiring, but fixable--let me remember the saying that I first heard in one of Anne Lamotte early books, when one of her friends said that a problem solved by an infusion of cash is not really an interesting problem. It's especially not a problem when one has the money.

The sun is up to begin the day's roasting--let me go for my walk.

Songs and Other American Experiments

It's Tuesday, and I began as I almost always do on a Tuesday, reading Dave Bonta's Poetry Blog Digest, which almost always takes me in interesting directions.  This morning, it's been a bit of a trip down memory lane, courtesy of Shawna LeMay's blog post which mentioned Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train."

She quoted lyrics, which I didn't remember from the song:

"Now I work down at the car wash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider
On a downbound train?"

So of course, I went in search of the song, which instantly catapulted me back to the fall of 1984, when the album Born in the USA came out.  I bought it at Wal-Mart, along with a fan for my dorm room.  A few weeks later, my boyfriend went back to Memphis where his mom needed him.  He'd been wearing my DC101 (a rock radio station) jacket that my sister had won somehow and given to me.  That jacket smelled of sweat and the Players cigarettes that he smoked, and I wore it all fall, feeling sad as my smells replaced his.

It was a different time, the results of a different election, daylight in America, brutal regimes across the globe, and when people wonder why I'm not as hopeless in 2026 as I might be, it's because I remember past time when I couldn't imagine how humanity would survive--and here we are, surviving this history that is not repeating but rhyming, a slant rhyme, to be sure, or maybe just a history so full of allusions that it's hard to read.

I wrote so many letters in the fall of 1984, actual letters on paper, back when long distance phone calls were expensive, and the only phone I had was the one at the end of my dorm hallway, where those of us with long distance relationships talked to distant loves.  My half of the correspondence filled a dresser drawer.  My boyfriend's letters took up a shoe box.

I married him anyway.  And now, here we are, decades later.  On Sunday we watched some PBS presentation on the American experiment, featuring Ken Burns talking about his documentaries.  It was fairly recent with the focus on the Revolution in 1776, and my spouse bleakly said, "It's all over."  I think he meant the grand experiment of freedom, and I said, "No, it's not."  I was talking about the American experiment of revolution and self-governance, with piercing awareness of all the ways that the foundational documents of the USA have not borne fruit--and all the ways they have.

We were well into the second bottle of wine on Sunday, so we didn't discuss further.  But it's a conversation we've been having since 1983 when we first met, so we didn't really need words.

This morning, some lines came to me, as I've been reading and writing:

We are half drunk with disappointment,
fueled by sundrenched picnics and longing,
and you declare the great experiment
dead, and I say no.

Schooled on Springsteen
and Woody Guthrie,
and the songs of enslaved people,
I know that times have always been hard.

I've begun the poem, but I don't know where it leads--like so many elements in my life.  The YouTube algorithm has given me delightful songs from the Springsteen starting point.  It's been a delightful morning, as Tuesdays so often are, rooted in the words (and rabbit holes) of others.

Long Lasting Labyrinth Made of Braids

Yesterday, I posted this picture after we finished setting up the labyrinth at the chapel at Lutheridge:

Early on, the Create in Me retreat ended with closing worship and a labyrinth walk.  We have occasionally used the labyrinth that was created at the old tennis court, but it's not very accessible--and right now, it's still under downed trees.  So back in 2009, we created the braided strips that make the labyrinth.

How do I know that?  I went back to my blog and found this blog post that describes making the strips.  I also found this blog post which is a photo essay, and this post, which describes the experience of using the strips in words.

I have many reasons for why I continue to blog:  this ability to quickly find answers to the "what year was that?" or "how did this project go?" questions is one big reason why I keep blogging.

On the braided strips, we wrote prayers, along with gratitude and appreciation.  This morning, I thought about those prayers from 2009.  How many of them have been answered?  I thought about all of the people:  those of us we prayed for, those of us who did the praying.  Who is still alive?

I thought of all the ways we've used these long, braided strips:  for every Create in Me retreat since (almost 2 decades!).  Other retreats have used the braids, even non-Lutheridge retreats.  Other people have been inspired to try something similar.  I love that it's a budget friendly way to create a labyrinth.

It's a great metaphor for all the ways that our prayers and communities support us, even as the years and decades go on.  We braid our prayers together, in a variety of ways.  Those prayers braid us together, both immediately and through the years.  God, the master fabric artist, takes our offerings and weaves together our communities into an even more beautiful creation.

Poetry Inspirations: First Troy, Second Troy, Invasion Anniversaries

We have reached the time of the semester when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about all I have agreed to do, all of my various obligations.  I know that I will get it all done.  I always do, and in past semesters, I've had even more on my plate.

I feel something shifting in me, something that says that maybe I should start saying no to more things.  Or maybe I just need a better calendar system so that I have a better sense of what I'm saying yes to--or maybe I need to get in the habit of saying, "I'll get back to you on this request when I've checked my calendar."

I am feeling that grouchiness that comes when I have papers to grade and I feel my poet self hollowing out.  I've been feeling uninspired.

Happily, I keep a blog.  Yesterday I went back to February of 2022, not looking for inspiration, but trying to remember the exact date when Putin invaded Ukraine (it was Feb. 24).  I found this post which answered my question and led me to the second blog post which inspired a poem yesterday morning.  It was this insight specifically:  "I am a middle-aged woman with arthritic feet and limited ability with weapons. I am not going to be the freedom fighter/spy who defeats Vladimir Putin; I do not have that level of skill or beauty."

Here's the first stanza of what is still a rough draft:

"I will not be the woman
who wins this war.
I have no skill with weapons.
I cannot kill the bloodthirsty dictator
after I seduce him,
I was never that kind of beauty.
No ships will burn
because of me,
no second Troy."

I felt inordinately proud of that last line of the first stanza, that allusion to the Yeats poem.  Does it work?  Is it too much?  I don't know yet.

I'm just happy to find that my poetry brain is still working in the background, as I make my way through each day's tasks.

Eighth Covid Shot, Last Covid Shot?

Yesterday after a great class finishing up Frankenstein in my British Lit class, I drove the hour back home, and my spouse and I went to Ingles, our local grocery store, where we hoped to get both flu shots and Covid boosters.  We are neither one of us over 65, but my spouse has some health conditions (early cardiopulmonary disease) that we thought might get us qualified.  I'm happy to report that we were successful in getting both shots.

I do wonder if this time is the last we'll get Covid shots.  Last year I assumed that getting a Covid booster and a flu shot would be part of our autumnal rituals.  This year, the future is much less clear, and not only for these vaccines.  

The last few days have brought a lot of public handwringing over the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.  I haven't ever seen his late night show.  I remember him from his days in the 1990's as the sidekick in Win Ben Stein's Money; from what I could tell, he was on there in the hopes that jock/frat boy types would keep watching the show.  He's had more staying power than I would have predicted when I watched that show.

In terms of first amendment rights being erased, I'm much more worried about ordinary people who have been losing their jobs because of stray remarks or social media posts done on the employee's own time.  I drove home on Thursday and heard a South Carolina state legislator talking about a professor at Presbyterian College.  Friday morning I looked back over my blog and Facebook posts.  I've always been careful what I post, so I didn't see any cause for alarm.

You might accuse me of self-censorship, of obeying in advance, of giving up my first amendment rights without using them.  But I've been blogging a LONG time, and I remember even earlier days of blogging, when we all tried to be careful about how much about our personal lives we revealed.  Some of us had jobs we wanted to keep, and some of us were aware the a lot of creeps out there might use personal information for nefarious purposes.

We had no idea how many creeps were out there and how many nefarious purposes there could be.

This morning, I went back through my blog for a different reason:  I wanted to remember past Covid shots.  Last year was my 7th booster, so yesterday was my 8th booster.  Last year and 2022, I got my booster at the same time in September.  In 2023, it was a bit later, in October.  I remember being thrilled when I got us the appointment for our first Covid vaccines.  The moment we were eligible, at 7 a.m., I started dialing for appointments, and I later wrote this blog post about it.  At the time I thought about the fact that I used to do this dialing to try to get concert tickets and now it was for a vaccine.

That post is so hopeful.  I would never have dreamed that we would come to a day when we'd need to worry about vanquished childhood diseases making a comeback, even as people who suffered from polio and measles in childhood are still with us.  I am one of the last of a generation who routinely had chicken pox.  I can't imagine why we want to unleash that on children again--or on adults, who will have childcare and work disrupted when their children are infected.

On a more mundane note, I have no side effects to report, only than sore arms--a small price to pay, if it means that I'm not laid low by these infections.

Poems and Chocolates and U2 on a September Tuesday Morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghosts and All the Past Goals that Haunt Us

I have spent a week trying to write a poem about Cassandra deciding that she won't predict politics anymore.  I've put some Civil War ghosts into the poem.  I've noted that she's the first to notice the turning of the leaves, and she knows the hour in the night that crickets stop calling to each other.  The poem has yet to come together, but it continues to percolate.

It's easier when a poem comes to me in one big rush, but these days, I'm grateful for poetry in any form.  These days, I'm feeling like a pale shadow of the writer that I used to be.  I am still starting most days by writing a blog post or two--and during the school year, I'm doing a lot of academic writing.

In short, I am still writing a lot, but it's not the kind of writing that will likely be remembered.  I remind myself that most of us aren't doing the kind of writing that will be anthologized in 100 years, if humanity is still around to create anthologies of great literature in 100 years.  I remind myself of writers like Dorothy Wordsworth, who wrote journals that were only valued for their insight into the writing of Coleridge and William Wordsworth, until feminist scholars saw something different.  Her journals wouldn't have survived for feminist scholars to see something different, had she not been connected to male writers valued for other reasons.

This morning, I reposted a blot post about the feast day of Mary and Martha and Lazarus.  I thought about the magazine editor who reached out to ask me if she could republish it; of course I said yes.  When I think about publishing, I've probably had more publications because of blog posts than because of a traditional submitting process.

In some ways, my thinking about myself as a writer/artist/creative person in the world mirrors my thinking about myself as a woman growing older.  I saw a picture of me in 2011, and I was thunderstruck at how thin I was.  I reminded myself that it was after a summer of concentrated trying to be lose weight:  a weight loss challenge at the gym, a chunk of money paid, consultations and keeping track and limiting calories and working out 2-3 hours most days.  And I kept the bulk of the weight off until the past year.  Do I want to do that again or do I want to focus on other priorities?

I think of how many publications I had in the early years of submitting.  I wanted publications, so I submitted a lot.  I thought/hoped publications might lead to bigger dreams coming true:  a different teaching job with a lighter load, a book length publication, a movie deal (dream big, right?).

I look at my current life.  Yes, I could be thinner, and I do plan to shed some of this weight.  Yes, I could publish more, and I do plan to keep submitting here and there.  But I also want to finish my MDiv by May of 2025.  

On that note, I'm bringing this writing to a close so that I can go on a hike with Create in Me friends.  It's one of our last chances of the summer.  In 9 days, I report back to work, and most of my hiking windows close until December.  On a brighter note, it's work at a school that's the kind of teaching job I hoped to win back in the days when I submitted on a much fiercer schedule.

Late Summer and Cassandra Poems

I look at the calendar in a bit of shock this morning; I only have two full weeks of summer left.  Where has the time gone?

In some ways, it's been a wonderful summer.  We've gotten to see family and friends.  I've done a variety of creative activities.  I took a seminary class that left me wishing we could have some additional meeting time.  We went to a state park in Arkansas that was beautiful--the perfect amount of travel (and I am so grateful we've managed to stay out of airports).  I've met regularly with my quilt group that makes quilts for Lutheran World Relief and volunteered at Lutheridge, the church camp.

We're at the point of the summer where I think, wait, why didn't I do more?  I could have written a novel.  I should have written more poems.  I could have gotten poetry packets ready to submit when those elusive submission windows open in a month or two.  The one writing practice that I keep faithfully is blogging, and yet I rarely say, "I continued my blogging practice all summer!"

I love going back in my blog to see what I was doing last year, or the years before.  Occasionally, I discover an idea for a poem that I forgot I had.  And even more occasionally, I discover a rough draft that doesn't need much work to become a finished draft.

I have been writing a lot of Cassandra poems--what happens when a modern Cassandra sees her prophecies coming true?  Last summer, I was working on a poem about Cassandra volunteering at summer camp during a time of climate change; singing about Noah building an "Arky, arky" takes on a different tone.  

This week, I finished a poem about Cassandra coloring her hair.  Once I might have worried that I was writing too many Cassandra poems--what would it mean for a longer volume of poems?  Now I'm happy to be writing at all.

I'm in the mood to write a brand new poem.  Let me see if Cassandra speaks to me this week.

When RevGalBlogPals Meet in Person

One of the joys of last week's intensive that I haven't written much about was the chance to meet a blogging friend in real life.  In a time that feels very long ago now, there was a group called RevGalsBlogPals, a group for clergywomen and people who support clergywomen.  We blogged about all sorts of things, some of them church related, some not.  There were all sorts of support groups and there were conferences and fun outings.  I was sad to see it end, and like so many things in my life that end, part of me understood and part of me was baffled.

I've continued to see various RevGals in the online realm, but last week, one of them came to the intensive.  I knew that Diane Roth had started the program, but I lost track of her progress; in retrospect, I should have sent her a message in advance so that it was less awkward on that first day.  I saw her nametag before she got there, but I wasn't sure how to say, "I know you online, but I'm not sure if you know me."  Sure, in retrospect, I should have just said that, but I was worried I might sound like a weird stalker.

Happily, Diane took the first step, and she did it during the pre-dinner meet and greet, which meant that we could spend the rest of the intensive as friends, not as people wondering how they knew each other.  On Friday at lunch, she asked what I was planning to do during our free time.  I talked about going to the library, and she wanted to go to an independent bookstore.  She tries to go to independent bookstores as she travels, and I'm happy to support bookstores too.  I had a car, which she didn't, and I'm familiar with Columbia.  It was a recipe for a successful outing to All Good Books in Five Points.

And we did have a successful outing.  The bookstore had a great selection of books, and we both found one to buy.  I was happy to find Susan Rich's latest book; I love supporting poets and independent books by buying books from bookstores.  

Alas, we didn't have time to buy a coffee or to explore Five Points.  We had to get back for more instructional sessions, which after all, was the reason we had come to the seminary campus.   I was happy to post this picture to Facebook, happy to be part of my favorite subgenre of FB posts, when online friends meet in real life and realize that they are just as delightful in person as online:

Writing Later in the Morning

So, here I am, blogging at a later time than is usual.  I've been up for hours, but I decided it was time to write in my offline journal, so that was my pre-dawn writing.  I'm done with both the classes I've been taking and the classes I've been teaching, but home repair has moved right in to take up the time that semester endings freed up.  

This morning I went back to Lowe's to get more of the tile we got last night.  I was happy to do it.  We've changed the design of the second shower, and these tiles will look better for the small corner bench.  Soon I will do the daily grocery run.

A quick zip to the store is so different here than in South Florida, although the distance traveled is similar.  The wait to check out is shorter, and the parking feels easier.  Of course, I'm also not in an office 45-60 hours a week, so maybe it's my perspective that has changed.

I've been hearing about heat indexes in South Florida this week:  115 at Key West yesterday.  Yikes.  And the ocean temps are the same as they were in mid-August last year, but it's May, now, not later in the year.  I just looked up the weather for Hollywood, and the heat index is 95 right now, at 9:42 in the morning.

I am so glad not to live there.  If I lived there, I'd be dreading hurricane season, and with good reason.

I got up this morning after having a series of apocalyptic dreams, needing to get to a safer place, trying to make sure we'd packed what we needed.  I had a similar dream 4 times, and in each dream, I was trying to remember to take the baking sheets.

Really?  Not the computer or the guns but the baking sheets?  My baking sheets are not that special.

Well, as a first attempt of blogging later in the morning, I'm not thrilled with this entry.  But I'll post it anyway.

Blogging in the Anthropocene

My blogging has dropped off a bit, but I'm hoping that will change, as I shift into summer.  I turned in my last big paper on Saturday; I still have a small one to write, but that shouldn't be a problem.  I could blame my drop off in blogging on all the end of semester stuff I had to do (endless grading, lots and lots of papers to write), and that would be partly true.  My blogging drop off is also in part because of housing renovations.  We get up early to get everything ready for the tile team that appears at 8 a.m.

Yesterday, it occurred to me to wonder why I feel that I have to get my blogging done by 8 a.m. or wait until the next day.  It's probably because I started blogging in 2008, where each week day I needed to be shifting to getting ready for work by 8 a.m., if not earlier.  So, now I am resolved to feel free to blog even if the morning has gotten away from me.

It's also occurred to me to wonder why blogging continues to feel so important to me.  After all, my poetry writing has dropped off, and my fiction writing is non-existent right now.  But I've been doing that kind of writing longer, and I recognize cycles.  Blogging has been a consistent form of writing for me, and the cycle has been that I get up and write before the day gets underway.

I like having an online journal and an offline journal.  Keeping a record of what life was like in the 21st century feels essential to me.  I've always loved the journals of other people, particularly women (particularly Dorothy Wordsworth), and their writing inspires me to do something similar, just like the writing of poets and novelists and short story writers inspire me to want to do something similar.

In pre-blogging days, I used to wonder what would happen to my journals if I died before achieving literary fame.  In these blogging days, I wonder what will happen if Google decides to charge a fee.  I like having an online journal, but what is it worth to me?  And why do I like having an online journal?  I like the idea that it might outlive me, but more importantly, it makes it easier for me.  It's much more searchable than my offline journal.

I've always been a person who goes back to my journals to see what was happening x years ago.  I like my blog because it's a bit more polished, a bit more edited.  I realize I'm biased, but it makes for good reading if I just have a bit of time to kill.  I often go to look up something, like a recipe or what was happening in my work life or a poem, and I find myself reading through a whole month of past posts.

So I'll keep blogging, and I'll look for ways to be more flexible with myself.  I'd like to get back to blogging once a day, and I'd like to get back to working on poetry daily too.  I have some weeks before my summer classes start, so it's a good time for a re-set. 

Twenty Online Years

I was struck by Dave Bonta's blog post this week, noting the 20 year anniversary of his blog.  I was struck by many aspects of this blog post, particularly the idea that we might not any of us be here to be blogging in 5 more years when the blog will turn 25:  "I won’t say I’ve lost all hope, but I do think it’s an open question whether any of us will be around for Via Negativa’s 25th. Authoritarianism, runaway militarism, and severe inequality make for a volatile mix even before you factor in the multiple environmental crises we face. Things have never been more grim."

Those of you who know me know that I have an imagination that runs to apocalypse.  Still, I give us more than 5 years, barring something like a nuclear blast on the level of those depicted in The Day After or Threads.  We could survive a Hiroshima or Nagasaki level blast because there would be unaffected populations that could help.

I was surprised, however, at how much everything broke down during COVID.  If that disease had killed more quickly and/or had killed more people at midlife than older people, it would have been much more of a challenge.  I was also surprised by how quickly supply chains came to a halt.  A different kind of pandemic emerged, one with a mortality rate like the Black Death of the 14th century (or if MERS became more easily transmissible), it's not hard for me to imagine the end of humanity.

I fear I've given the wrong idea about Dave's blog post celebrating 25 years.  It was less doom and gloom than it was some nostalgia for the past, along with determination to keep going.  I love the way the blog post ends (I started to type "wins," which also works as a verb here):   "Thanks to all who read here or share links with friends, and thanks to my friends and colleagues in what we used to call the blogosphere, especially other members of the Class of ’03, who were such grand company in those dark times. We started online magazines and played with free online tech to make poems in new ways and shared strange thoughts and hand-made things, and from time to time compared notes on the enormous lights and mysteries that still fill the earth."

I was not blogging as early as 2003; I didn't start blogging until 2008, but I was reading blogs in 2003 and it wouldn't be too long before I started thinking about creating my own.  That was back in the days before social media influencers, days when regular people thought, what on earth do I have to say that is worthy of being recorded online?

I was intrigued by all the online opportunities that were developing, new places to publish poems.  And to this day, I still get more feedback from online publications than from publications in journals.  When I first started submitting to online journals, they seemed much more ephemeral than print journals.  No longer.

I'm also still intrigued by all the ways we can use technology to do things that once would have been impossible if we didn't have very expensive equipment, from taking high quality pictures to doing lay out, to having wide distribution.  Those who want to do so have many ways to stay in touch with fans/readers.  And we can create such new kinds of hybrid work that wouldn't have been possible for many of us, like collaging of word and image, or collaging of word, image, music, and/or video.  Some of us are creating things that might be less like poetry and more like something else that has yet to be named.

I think about my undergraduate days, twenty years before the birth of Via Negativa, when a desktop computer for a regular user seemed very far away.  What a long way we've come.  I wonder what the next 20-40 years will bring? 

End of Semester Balancing

My blogging has fallen off a bit.  I realize that some people might look at my frequency of posting, 4-7 times a week, as extreme.  But once, I blogged each and every day, two new posts, one for my theology blog and one for this blog.

My poetry writing has also fallen off a bit.  I looked through my files and was astonished to see that I haven't done anything with poetry since the earliest days of November.  It makes sense.  November was a time of schedule upsets, with Quilt Camp and Thanksgiving.  I have no regrets.  Well, that's not strictly true.  I wish that I had a schedule upset and then went right back to regular poetry writing, and everything else that is good for me, like exercise and eating enough vegetables.

Ah well.  By the time I figure out how to do that, perhaps I'll be retired.  Or maybe it will be a lifelong balancing act.

My balancing act is off balance these days because the end of the semester is upon me.  Yesterday I turned in grades, after spending a week-end deep in grading.  Turning in grades sounds so easy, like sliding a slip of paper into a mailbox.  But these days, it involves having several windows open on my computer, going back and forth, checking and doublechecking, waiting for the grade submission report, and saving it.

So, I've got grades turned in for my Spartanburg Methodist College classes.  But I still have grading to do along with final grade submissions for 3 online classes.  My seminary classes aren't done, but the end is coming soon; I'm trying not to feel panicky about the two papers I need to write.

So, today's blog post will not be substantive.  In fact, I just got an e-mail that said that I'm late in meeting the requirement to have the syllabus for next semester's class uploaded, the class that doesn't start until Jan. 22.  So I'll plug in those dates this morning.

But I do want to note one last thing.  We may get snow tonight!  Yesterday morning, the forecast was for nothing to a light dusting.  Then at some point in the afternoon, the forecast changed to a light dusting to an inch.  Now the forecast is for an inch or two.  Or maybe just a trace.

We live in the southern part of the county, at a lower elevation, so we may get rain instead of snow.  I have lived in southern places with winter weather to know that we will rarely get snow.  Still, I've been surprised by how thrilled I feel.  Part of it is the kind of snow that we'll get, the kind that will be gone by noon.  Part of it is that I don't have to leave the house tomorrow if the situation gets really bad.  And part of it is that snow fits a Christmas vibe.

Cassandra Colors Her Hair after the Apocalypse

Later today, I'll turn in midterm grades at Spartanburg Methodist College.  In some ways, it's amazing to me that we're already at midterm.  The weather is still somewhat summery.  I look across the mountains as I'm driving, and most of the trees are still green.

But on my daily walks, I notice that some of the trees have lost all of their leaves already.  In the area beside the road where I saw the bear back in August as I walked up to the chapel, a bear would not be hidden there today--the undergrowth has lost most of its leaves.

When I went back to my August blog posts to verify that I saw the bear in August, I saw another blog post, Cassandra Colors Her Hair.  It talked about my visit to the fancy hair salon that served wine in crystal glasses, and it mentioned a poem that came to me at the hair salon.  I wondered if I ever wrote it.

I went to my rough draft file, and I don't think I ever did.  I decided to give it a go.  My blog post talked about the poem arriving in full in my head, but it's no longer there.  Happily, my blog post gave some details about what I planned to write:  "It will contrast her past life, when she went to salons that served wine along dreams about what a hair cut and color could give us, with a current life in the midst of a climate crisis--or will it be post apocalypse? I have a vision of Cassandra who knows how to use plants to coax life from a womb or end it, to use plants to stave off infection, to poison or to cure. But for the most part, she uses her vast garden (and the nature preserve beyond her property) to color cloth and to dye her hair."

I decided to paint the poem with apocalyptic tones.  Here's how it begins:

I uncork the last bottle of white wine,
an extravagance I may regret later if I need
to disinfect, if I need to forget.

The poem came easily.  I had that uneasy feeling that back in August, I had an idea for an even better poem.  I shrugged off that feeling and kept writing.  I've ended up with a decent poem--but is it finished?  I'll keep the document open and see.

I'm also thinking of my poetry process these days.  Once I wrote poems longhand on purple legal pads, but these days, I open a document on the computer, and I toggle back and forth.  I'm getting more written that way.  It's not as easy to go back to rough drafts and leaf through them, the way it is in a legal pad.

I am so happy that I wrote a poem.  It's been weeks of writing a few lines and then sputtering.  And in the spirit of appreciation for August Kristin who left me poem notes, let me write down an idea for another poem I had as I drove back from Lutheranch, back across Georgia on Sunday.

I thought about what and who had previously been on the land, about Harriet Tubman leading slaves to safety.  I thought about dark skies and scars and reading the stars, a map to freedom, stars that scar the black back of the sky.  I thought about all the people we cannot save, no matter how hard we try.  I thought about writing about Harriet Tubman when she's old and cannot save people anymore, but is that valid?  I realized I don't know much about Harriet Tubman when she's old.  I thought about Harriet Tubman and the Stono River and her spywork during the Civil War.

This blog post has gone in an unexpected direction.  I sat down feeling a bit grumpy because I thought I didn't have much to say.  And now, I have not only a blog post but a new poem--hurrah!

Ebbs and Flows and Writing Rhythms

My blogging practice fell off a bit last week--but if I'm honest, I think I've been missing a day or two each week for months.  In some ways, I'm OK with that.  In other ways, it makes me feel a bit panicky.  My other writing practices have been in decline too, but I've told myself that as long as I blogged daily, I would be O.K.

I'm not sure how I came to this line of thought.  I used to say the same about my morning pages, 3 pages written longhand, each and every morning.  Blogging fills the same purpose in some ways:  part journaling, part getting out of my own way, part recording of things that will otherwise not be remembered, part inspiration, part duty.

Even in this time period of more flexible schedules, I still have trouble balancing all that I want to do.  Is that true?  Or is it more true to say that some writing I no longer want to do?  I still love the idea of writing novels, but I also realize that my novels are likely to remain unpublished.  I still love writing the novel as a project, as something that keeps me entertained--but these days, with so many schedule disruptions, I'm not likely to see a novel to completion of the rough draft, let alone revision.

Before our Labor Day travel and our COVID infections, I was getting into a poetry rhythm.  I had actually composed a poem or two to completion.  My more usual practice over the past year or two (or more?) has been that I write a few lines, have a few more ideas, write a bit more, run out of time, never return to the draft.  My older process was to think the poem to completion before writing anything--I did wind up with more completed poems, but I lost more ideas too.

Obviously, both approaches have pros and cons, but I do wish the poetry part of my brain was feeling more inspired on a daily basis.  I was going to write that I should try reading more poetry, but I'm actually reading quite a bit of poetry as I prepare for my in-person class each week.  

I tend to be hard on myself for all the scrolling and internet reading and online ways of "wasting" time.  Some that time could be better spent.  Some of it is class prep.  Some of it will come out in poems in interesting ways.

I am grateful that I'm no longer spending time, so much time, getting ready for accreditation visits and doing the documenting that is required of administrators.  I do not miss that kind of writing, although I was skilled at it.

Let me do what I always do:  trust that my processes are at work, while also looking for ways to have more writing in each day.

Planning for Morning Writing

It is one of those mornings where I feel like I don't have much to say.  Some mornings, I arrive at the blogging desk with multiple possibilities fighting for my attention.  Today, I think, well, I already wrote about my days of piecing small scraps into larger squares, which is mostly what I've been doing.  I went to the grocery store--blah topic.  I haven't done interesting sketching lately or taken interesting photos.

So this morning, let me think about what I want my mornings to look like, once classes start.  My mornings will be relatively free, at least at the beginning of the semester.  I am aware of my tendency to waste hours (hours!) scrolling through a variety of pages, some with snippets of information, like Twitter and Facebook, and some with more substantial articles, like The Washington Post and The New York Times.  

I think back to times when I wrote more and writing was the first thing I did in the morning.  Of course, that was back in the 90's, when the internet was a very different experience, and writing was more attractive.  Let me think about the current day.

I've done a good job of continuing to blog, regardless of the distractions that come my way.  I would like to write more poems.  This week, I've done a good job of writing poems--I've written 2.  I'd like to do more to get drafts of poems revised and typed into the computer.  I've done a decent job at continuing to send poems out to journals, particularly those that don't have submission fees.  At $3 a pop to submit, my submission strategies of decades ago would cost me a huge amount.

So here's my proposal to myself:  three mornings a week, before I go to the sites that I know are huge consumptions of my time (see above), I will turn my attention to writing poetry first.  Not typing poetry into the laptop, but putting pen to paper or pulling lines out of my list of abandoned lines and composing poems on the laptop.  

When I realize I'm spending too much time scrolling, I want to take a break and do something else.  If I'm listening to podcasts (often what I'm doing when I'm doing mostly mindless scrolling), I want to sew or quilt, sketch, or type poems into the computer, depending on how much brain power I have.

I'll continue to send out poems to journals as I have been doing.  As I look back over my submission log since arriving to my seminary apartment, I'm happy with that effort.  Several times a month, I send out a few packets.  I'm not sure I can do much more without spending a lot more money.  And right now, I'd rather do other things with that money.

Poets Walking in the Woods

Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from blogger and poet Dave Bonta that ended this way:  "Just wanted to mention that I'll be in DC for 12 days starting tomorrow night, on the off-chance that you're still in town and able to get together for a walk and/or chat."  We exchanged possibilities for a walk, with yesterday being the day that was best for both of us.

So much was fortuitous:  we didn't choose Thursday, a day of relentless rain.  Dave had 12 days, which gave us lots of flexibility.  I was at the end of the term, so scheduling a walk was more possible than it would have been in, say, November, when we would have had to schedule around my classes and paper due dates and travelling that I was doing.

Even though we've never met in real life, I've known Dave for over a decade through his blogging, poetry, photography, and online presence on Facebook and Twitter.  We've e-mailed off and on and worked on some projects together; one of the early ones was a celebration of the birth of Emily Dickinson (in 2010?).  One might protest that we don't really "know" anyone virtually, but I would say that long-form blogging is a different way of knowing someone than one would by way of tweets.  We also have mutual friends in the blogosphere and beyond.  

In short, I felt more comfortable going for a walk with Dave than I would with someone I knew from class.  I wasn't too worried that Dave would turn out to be a serial killer--and yes, I am aware of all the serial killers who have managed to hide their true selves for decades--and yet, they didn't blog or post poems and photography, so there's that.

DC is a city full of greenspaces and parks and trails, so we met at Glover Archbold Park, at a spot where several trails meet.  I got there a bit early, which was fine, because I had a chance to take pictures of this tree and to wonder who had decorated it:

Shortly after I took this picture, Dave and his friend arrived.  We made our way down to the trail and started our walk.  

At first, the trail was easy, wet but not treacherous.  In places, we had to go more slowly because of wet leaves and mud, but that was OK.  Along the way, we talked about poetry and technology and politics and science, both climate science that tells us of a difficult future approaching (so glad we sold our South Florida house!) and the science that gives us a glimpse of what formed the land.  We hiked on top of aging sewer pipes cased in concrete.  We crossed major DC streets and descended back to the trail. 

We did not try to go across the stream, even though in my younger years, when I had better boots and had never broken a bone, I would have fearlessly forged across all sorts of obstacles.  Not this year.  I was grateful that we were all in agreement about not taking risks.

Dave had me stand next to a tree that was so tall that he estimated it was over 250 years old.

We walked for a little over an hour, and then it was time for me to head back to studying for my Church History I final that I take today.  Dave and his friend headed south to continue their rambles.  On Massachusetts Avenue, Dave's friend took this picture of us with the trail entrance behind us:

I am so glad that I had this opportunity to meet Dave in real life, glad to be reminded that if I get along with people online, I'm likely to have a pleasant time in real life.  I'm also glad that we took a trail that I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to explore on my own; it seems mysterious and less passable when viewed from the street/sidewalk than when viewed at trail level.  I'm also glad to be reminded that although I'm older than I once was, I'm more steady on my feet than I sometimes fear.

Now let me go on one of my walks that is more usual for me, a walk around the seminary neighborhood, enjoying the holiday lights.  And then, let me get ready for my final exam and take it.

Spooky Season Snapshots

Let me capture some snapshots of a week of high festival feast days, the beginning of the last third of this semester of seminary, the start of the eleventh month.

--Last night I went for a walk, took a look at the moon hiding behind haziness, and thought, the spooky season isn't done with us yet.

--I have been listening to an interesting mix of music.  On Monday, Halloween, a FB friend posted a link to Donovan's "Season of the Witch," a song I used to return to regularly in October.  I haven't thought about that song in years, perhaps decades.  Yesterday, a snippet of a November song came to me, and I spent time listening to Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

--We are not having gloomy weather.  This week we are expecting highs 10-15 degrees above normal.  Half the country is experiencing this, while the western half of the country is experiencing much colder than usual weather.  I would say this is odd, but odd weather has become the norm.

--I have been looking for deals on Halloween candy at stores within walking distance.  I haven't found any, but yesterday, I did treat myself to ice cream.  My favorite, mint chocolate chip, is a seasonal flavor, they tell me.  So I had a scoop of pumpkin butterscotch and a scoop of salted caramel.  Yum.

--Walking back from the most understocked Target in the U.S. (not much candy of any kind, Halloween, Christmas, or regular) on Tuesday, I did find a hardcover copy of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle in a little free library.  Better than cheap candy corn!

--The little free libraries in this neighborhood are amazing.  I've gotten Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette, David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, and Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (I've already read it, but I'm happily revisiting it now).

--I was sad to hear about the death of Julie Powell, one of the first bloggers that made me understand the variety of ways that a blog could be used.  She cooked her way through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogged about it--which ultimately ended up in a book deal and a movie.  She was only 49--it was sudden cardiac arrest. 

--Yesterday morning I drowsed in bed, and then I realized I could lie on my back with both hands under my head, which I wasn't able to do a month ago.  This morning I counted:  tomorrow it will be 30 weeks since I broke my wrist.  I haven't gotten full range of motion back yet, but I'm much closer.

--I have made a small pot of oatmeal--some for me and some for the bread dough.  I am about to finish the 3rd bag of flour since I moved here.  I am loving the way that I am eating:  mostly vegetarian, mostly healthy, with occasional treats, like the applesauce cake that I made on Saturday.  I thought about my bread dough and the remaining flour--if I want a pan of brownies, will I have enough flour?  Yes.

--Yes, I could buy another bag, but it would take a car trip, and I will have enough of that in November.  Of course, I could park in the garage at the nearby Wegman's, but I don't want to.  I'm not scared of the garage, but I'm enjoying living like a European or a New Yorker, little trips to restock, only buying what I can carry.

--I have also cleaned the oven.  I baked a sweet potato yesterday, which leaked onto the floor of the oven, even though I wrapped it in foil.  I didn't discover the leak until it started burning when I turned on the oven to pre-heat it for the bread baking.  Sorry, neighbors, for the scorched sweet smell!

--I think of this as a week where I haven't gotten as much done as I had planned--by which I mean, I haven't gotten as much written on papers due next week as I had hoped to have done by today.  But I have written 2 poems (or is it more?  less?) and made some submissions to literary journals.  I have done some sketching.  I have walked--most days, twice a day.

--It's been a good week.

Days of W(h)ine and Packing

Blogging has been a bit lighter lately.  Once I blogged daily, and before that, I wrote posts for 2 different blogs daily.  But since I broke my wrist, blogging comes with some challenges.  With voice recognition software, I could overcome most of those challenges most mornings.

This morning is the first time I am typing in a traditional way.  Wow.  And even then, I need to rest a bit.

Lately, blogging has been disrupted by travel and by the upcoming move.  I've been doing lots of packing.  And there is still more to be done.

I am hopeful that my brain is storing material for later, that I will have a late summer and autumn of more writing.  

And of course, I'll keep trying to write daily here.