The Biology Department, Slaughtered by a Colleague

I can't stop thinking about the campus shooting in Huntsville, Alabama on Friday. I was going to post about it yesterday, but it seemed so unseemly for Valentine's Day.

Long ago, when I was a schoolchild in Montgomery, Alabama, we took a field trip to Huntsville to see the space industry exhibits. I remember it as a sleepy town, and by all reports, it still is.

But school shootings are still shocking to me, regardless of whether or not they occur in sleepy towns or big urban centers. Or perhaps I should clarify: mass shootings are still shocking to me. I'm not one of those anti-gun people. I'm the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and I spent most of my life in the American South, and the gun owners I've know have been sober, responsible people. They may have owned a small arsenal, but they've always understood what that meant.

I don't think that more gun control is the answer. I think that more funding to get people mental health care might be the answer.

I keep thinking of that Biology department, having a faculty meeting, when one of their own shows up and opens fire. I keep thinking of the dead, and how they spent their last minutes on earth in a meeting, and it was probably not a thrilling meeting.

Many years ago now, one of my colleagues dropped dead of a brain aneurysm just after she turned grades in. One of my other colleagues said, "You know what horrifies me most? She spent her last days on earth grading research papers."

As I said yesterday, we're here for such a short time--and these experiences remind me of just how short they might be. I don't want to get so freaked out that I decide not to give myself goof off time. On the other hand, I'd like to keep my goof off time to a minimum, or at least in balance with my other priorities.

For years now, I've known that I'm in a dangerous profession. When I was full-time faculty, I taught over one hundred students a term, and it wasn't uncommon for several of them to be a bit unhinged. And even if all my students were the picture of solid mental health, they were likely dating (or breaking up with) people who weren't. I always assumed that if someone showed up on a dark night in the parking garage to shoot me, that I probably wouldn't even remember who they were--which would, of course, enrage the shooter even more.

Of course, given how well our students remember our names, I'd have probably found myself at the wrong end of a gun of someone else's enraged student.

It's only recently that I've begun to think about the mental stability of my colleagues. I don't work in a tenure granting institution, so at least we don't have to worry about colleagues who don't get tenure showing up to take revenge. But I can't help but notice how in any workplace, there's at least one colleague who blows up everything way, way out of proportion, who takes things way, way too personally, who can't remember that work is really just not that important in the long range scheme of things. I've noticed that our buildings are not well-constructed, that our walls are paper thin.

I don't see much that I can do about these vulnerabilities, except to be the cheerful person who tries to help us all keep life and work in perspective. Most of us aren't doing work that's worth dying for--or killing for.

Thinking about Rejection, Loss, and Love on Valentine's Day

I don't have happy memories of Valentine's Day. I remember longing for a secret admirer, someone who would reveal their tender feelings on a Valentine left in my mailbox; we spent the week before Valentine's Day making those mailboxes out of shoeboxes.

I went to elementary school in the 1970's, before we worried about children's self esteem. If you wanted to bring Valentines for only your favorite five fellow students, you were allowed to do that. So, some people wound up with a shoebox/mailbox full of greetings and treats, and some of us wound up with very little.

I was never the popular girl, but not the total outcast either. I was the Lisa Simpson of my classes: a little too smart, with interests outside of the standard ones. My teachers loved me but didn't quite know what to do with me. I usually had a few friends, who also loved me, but didn't know what to do with me.

Some things haven't really changed. But some have. I'm better at making people comfortable. I don't feel a need to show how different I am, how outside the norm, and how that somehow makes me better. I'm no longer so needy for love. That's because I have love. Every day is Valentine's Day in the Berkey-Abbott household.

O.K., I exaggerate a little. But still, when you have a beloved, when you have a family who loves you, when you have friends who still want to have lunch with you--well, then, most weeks do indeed feel like Valentine's Day.

Even if you're having a sluggish technology week, the same week when all sorts of things break, you still get Valentine's moments. This week, the handle inside the car that opens the door broke into several pieces, the toilet seat finally cracked, we had to buy a new car battery, my work computer finally died, and we had to buy two new car tires. I'm a poet, so it's hard not to read some sort of symbolism into all of this. But sometimes, I read too much into what is really a set of coincidences.

Today, I'm reading on various blog/web sites that Lucille Clifton died. Now that's a loss I could have done without. I have always loved her self-acceptance. I can't find a citation for what I'm about to relate, but I remember someone asking her why she didn't write longer works, and she mentioned that she had all these children, so she wrote what she had time to write. I've often thought of those words as I've struggled to balance my writing with the needs/demands of my job. If she could keep going and making such important art, even when she only had scraps of time, surely I can do it too.

Many of us love her poem "Homage to my Hips"; go here to hear her read it.

We are all here for such a short time. I hope that my poems some day inspire and comfort and support a wide circle of readers, as Clifton's poems have done.

So, one last Valentine's Day wish for us all: may you get what you desire this Valentine's Day. And may it live up to your expectations and hopes!

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!

As a budding Victorian Literature scholar, I learned early on about the importance of Darwin's writing to literature, as well as the writings of other Victorian scientists, like Sir Charles Lyell. I always reminded my students that we're used to living in a time period where this year's scientific fact will be overturned very shortly. We're used to living in a time period where our dearest beliefs will be challenged. The Victorians were not.

I remember the first time I taught a British Literature survey class. I was just finishing up my Ph.D., and I was allowed to teach the class at the local community college in Columbia, South Carolina. I talked about Darwin as I launched into our study of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." I said, "Of course, these days, there's no one who doesn't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution." I looked around the room at the disbelief in those faces, and from the ensuing discussion, I came to realize that I was the only person in the room who did believe in evolution. Granted, it wasn't a very big class. But still, I was shocked that this theory was still seen as debatable.

I realize that scientists use the word "theory" differently than the rest of us. My students did not realize that, and no amount of arguing on my point could convince them.

Several years later, I came across a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in a used bookshop. Across the nation, school systems were embroiled in debates about whether or not evolution could be taught in Biology classrooms. I probably bought that book as my own silent protest. When I brought that book to my college classrooms on the day when I talked about Victorian thinkers that changed our lives, I could see some students fighting revulsion, as if I had brought them porn.

Strange to think of how revolutionary that book has been, how radical it has seemed to people--and how boring it is to read. It's like reading Marx, another writer, whose books students react to as if I've brought them porn. I can't decide if it's because the ideas seem so basic to me or because the prose is so lumbering.

Darwin, Marx, and Freud: I would argue that those Victorian writers probably changed the twentieth century more than any other. We could have spirited debate about whether those changes were for the better or worse. As with any great writers, I suppose the answer would be that those changes were both for better and for worse.

Natasha Trethewey's Fabulous Reading

Let's talk about poetry readings. Some I've endured, much like some of the more odious vegetables, because I know that they're good for me. Some I've endured because I was raised properly, and it would be rude to just get up and leave. But most of the poetry readings I've attended have been on the spectrum from good to fabulous.

Natasha Trethewey was on the outermost end of fabulous. I do not exaggerate when I say I could have stayed in my auditorium seat and listened to her read and talk about her work all night.

She took questions at the end, and I decided to be big and brave. I've often resisted saying anything to my favorite authors after an early encounter with Marge Piercy, where I tried to tell her how much her work meant to me as she fixed me with a piercing stare, and I could just hardly talk, and I walked away feeling like the world's biggest idiot. When I read, I try to remember to smile, especially afterwards, when people come up to talk to me. I'm still painfully aware of how hard it can be to approach an author or any creative type who seems successful in a way that I worry I will never be.

I prefaced my question by saying I was interested in how people put together book length manuscripts, and I asked Natasha Trethewey how she put together her book Native Guard, which seemed so beautifully woven together.

She said that she was working on poems about her experience of growing up the child of a mixed race marriage in the South and on poems about the black soldiers, often forgotten and nameless, of the Civil War. She said she didn't realize at first that her book would also include poems about the loss of her mother.

She recounts an experience where she was running through a cemetery near her Georgia house, and she could almost hear ancient voices talking to her. She talked about the end of the poem, "Graveyard Blues," the couplet that talks about her mother's headstone. She talked about that poem coming to her in a rush, and that the end is a fiction, that she wrote it even as she realized that her mother had no headstone. She realized that her mother was just as lost and nameless as those black, Union soldiers. And thus, she realized how the poems all worked together.

She talked at great length, and I was so grateful for her thoughtful answer. Some grubby part of me wanted something more technical, how she decided on which poem went in which order. But my more noble part of me was just so thrilled to hear her talk about her work in such an honest way.

She talked about miscegenation before she read the poem of that name. She said, "You know what miscegenation is, right?" She cocked her head quizzically and said, "Raise your hands if you don't know the term miscegenation." I looked around, and all the students had their hands in the air. Again, I thought about how much the world has changed, just in my lifetime. Those students all looked like a glorious mix of races to me, and down here in South Florida, race has a whole different dimension than in most parts of the country. But still, even in the most remote parts of the country, it's not illegal for me to marry outside of my race, and in much of the country, the act wouldn't command much interest at all.

So, will gender be next? How will our lives and our relationships be different in the next 44 years?

But I digress.

Here's another thing I noted. One of the students asked Natasha Trethewey how long she had been writing poetry, and she said basically, her whole life. She said that she had published her first book about 20 years after she published her first individual poems.

Again, the grubby part of my mind sprang into action. Let's see, I first published my poems in 1998, so 20 years . . . . I felt so grateful, because there are times when I feel like I'm behind some sort of schedule. Who creates this schedule? I don't know. But I'm always happy to hear about poets who don't just blaze into public awareness some three months after their first poem appears. I like being reminded that it's fine to let the work take time.

When I was younger, say thirty years old, I still felt behind schedule. Sure, I'd earned my Ph.D. and bought a house or two, but I hadn't published my first book yet (I had written some book-length works, but I gave myself no credit for that). I comforted myself by reminding myself that people were living longer these days, so what used to be midlife really wasn't anymore. I wasn't approaching midlife!

Now that I really am, probably, approaching midlife, more than ever, each passing day, I hear time's winged chariot hurrying near (thank you Andrew Marvell). It's good to go to readings like Natasha Trethewey's, to come away inspired, to remember that the point of it all is to write the poems, to see the connections, to work out one's obsessions on the page.

It's also good to remember how fortunate I am, even if I haven't had a book with a spine published yet. I was surrounded by people who had gotten their M.F.A.s, who couldn't find much in the way of jobs. And I'm in a job where I'm feeling happy and fulfilled these days (even though much of my office work this week has consisted of racing to finish tasks before the computer crashed and watching the computer reboot, slowly, oh so slowly). Unlike some poets, who claim that they need to be miserable to write, I do best when I've got a steady paying job that gives me some fulfillment. I did the adjunct thing for awhile, but the uncertainty drove me mad. That and the driving.

It's wonderful to go to a fabulous poetry reading at any point, but it's especially great during a time when I'm having good luck with my own poetry. Natasha Trethewey is as polished in person as she is on the page. If you have the chance to hear her read, grab it!

Satellite Dreams

The other night I dreamed I was a satellite. Almost always, I'm either a passive observer of my dreams, like I'm watching a movie, or if I'm a character, I'm some version of me.

I'm almost sure I've never dreamed that I'm an inanimate object.

Actually, in my dreams, I wasn't inanimate. I was moving far above the earth, and I was sentient. In part of my dream, I realized that there had been some kind of apocalypse, and I was watching a woman in Cincinnati. I was worried about her, because I wasn't seeing any other humans, and I wasn't sure how she would cope.

I wonder if I can transform any of this into a poem.

Perhaps I dreamed this because I've been thinking about technology lately. It only takes one day in the office where the computer isn't working properly, the copy machine is jammed, and I realize that I don't know how to send a fax to make me realize how dependent we've become on the machines. As if I didn't already know.

As I was walking the few city blocks between the parking lot and the building, I realized that I was the only pedestrian not talking into a cell phone. That made me think of the satellites far above us which make it possible for us to talk wirelessly.

I also thought of earlier generations who talked to god on high. Now we talk to satellites. Or do we talk through satellites?

Again, I'll be interested to see the poems that might emerge from this bubbling stew.

Thank You--to Title Voters, to Reviewers, to Readers

A big THANK YOU to those of you who voted on titles. I'm leaning towards I Stand Here Shredding Documents. I like the reference back to Tillie Olsen (and I'm thrilled that people caught the reference), and I like that the original short story had a tie to women's lives across generations, which is what I'm hoping my collection does.

I worry that Sleepless Beauties might turn off people who hate poems which are based on fairy tales. Who are these people who hate allusions and think that we should never refer to literature that came before? Why would you throw such a powerful tool out of your toolbox? Interestingly, I never met those people in my classes where we were working on our M.A.'s, M.A.T.'s, and Ph.D.'s. No, it was the MFA students who seemed to think they could go it alone.

Of course, the University of South Carolina had a very different M.F.A. program when I was there than the one they have now. When I was there, people came to worship at the feet of James Dickey, and nary a woman taught in the program. Come to think of it, not many women stayed in the program long. The men who were there were young and braggy types. Now, when I think about them, I see them as young and scared, but at the time, I was young and scared myself, and all that swagger and braggadocio turned me off.

But I digress. I've almost decided to reject Penelope Plans a Play Date and Scout at Midlife for the same reasons. Why risk turning off readers?

You might say, "So, you're not willing to risk turning off readers by alluding to fairy tales and mythology, but you'll allude to Tillie Olsen?" Yes.

And Meeting Hell, while I like the word play, just isn't attractive enough, I think.

So, thank you again for helping me decide!

And while I'm saying thank you, let me say a big thank you to Sandy Longhorn, who agreed to swap books with me--and then wrote a wonderful review of my work! Yesterday was a day of technology hell in my office, so during the brief window when the computer/network let me onto the Internet, it was even more of a delight to read kind words from a reader who got what I was trying to do! Go here to read the review.

There have been many advantages to having a chapbook, but one of the main ones is having something to trade. What a treat to send my poems out into the world and to get poems back. There are benefits to a barter economy. Rachel Dacus has a great post that praises chapbooks. Apparently there's a Facebook page set up to trade chapbooks. I can't find it, but maybe you'll have better luck.

If all this talk of chapbooks inspires you to the ancient art of book creating and/or book binding, go here and here for a great photo essay on Elizabeth Adam's blog. Sometimes, when I dream of returning to school, I think that I might get a degree in Book Arts. Let's see, I dream of degrees in Fiber Arts, in Theology, in painting . . . . Happily, today is our General Education Festival, where I get to have fun with tie dye and beading. Tomorrow I'll be typing with teal-tinted hands!

But maybe you're saying, "Forget it. I'm snowed in my house indefinitely." Leslie Pietrzyk has a great list here of reads for a snowy day. She warmed my heart by talking about the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter. When I was a child, Laura Ingalls Wilder was one of my favorite writers. I dreamed of a little house on the prairie. My father gently reminded me of how the plumbing of that long ago day would not have lived up to my standards.

Her post reminded me of Doug Fine's recent post about his struggle with a wheelbarrow and his family's reading of Laura Ingalls Wilder: "At night, in front of the fire whose fuel a functional wheelbarrow is supposed to be carting to the Ranch house, we’ve been reading Little House On the Prairie out loud as a family here, and let me tell you, the fact that book patriarch Charles Ingalls could build a cabin in three days causes me some head-scratching. It takes me (and my toddler assistant) longer than that to inflate a Tru Value wheelbarrow tire. (Never mind that Ingalls settled his family and built said cabin in the middle of the existing culture’s Superhighway.)" His writing is always very funny--even though it's very honest about the difficulties of being a modern Ingalls family, it still makes me yearn for a homestead on hundreds of acres to call my own.

I know that many of you are despairing about your ability to ever shovel your driveway, much less doing any other type of homesteading activities. Many of you are probably drooling over seed catalogs (if your creative proclivities run that way) and doubting that Spring will ever come.

Enjoy these days of darkness--we get a chance to get caught up with our reading. And if you're down here in sunny South Florida, come on by the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale: dye a T-shirt, buy a taco, find some inspiration to go green: enjoy the fact that we can be outdoors.

Hopelessly Devoted to "Grease"

Today at spin class, we cycled away to the songs from the soundtrack to the movie Grease. I already knew that these songs would make great exercise songs. When my sister and nephew visited in September, we spent much of the week-end dancing around the living room to that soundtrack.

So now I have a number of pleasant memories associated with that movie, but this morning, I'm awash in memories of first seeing the movie. It was the summer of 1978, and we went several times. My mom even let me and a group of friends go see the movie without an adult along--a first for me. We spent the movie buying more from the concession stand than we should have. Yes, some pre-teens would have done something more daring, but my big rebellion was buying not one soda but two!

My friends and I fell in love with this movie. We mourned the fact that we had been born too late to wear poodle skirts. In retrospect, our moms were awfully patient. I'm sure that their high school experiences were quite different.

As an older woman, I find the movie's statements about gender and class to be fascinating and often overlooked. It's not really such a feel-good movie at all! Why on earth would pre-teen girls think that the 1950's were a better place to be? The movie isn't shy about presenting the limited options for women. Go listen to "Beauty School Drop-out" again. You can trade in your teasing comb for a shot at the steno pool--swell. And those kind of movies, along with Our Bodies, Ourselves, taught me to be profoundly grateful for the birth control pill, which wouldn't have been available to the girls of Grease. There's that subplot about whether or not Rizzo is pregnant, and even in my more innocent pre-teen days, I could tell that pregnancy would REALLY limit her already limited options.

Somewhere, Alternate Life Kristin wonders whether or not to say too much about what her teenage years were really like as her pre-teen daughters fall in love with the movies of John Hughes. They debate about which characters they would have been in The Breakfast Club or St. Elmo's Fire. Alternate Life Kristin wonders if she would be seen as a bad mother if she showed her pre-teen daughters Heathers or Pump Up the Volume. Alternate Life Kristin decides not to talk about the movies that really influenced her: Threads, The Day After, Testament. She wants to shield her daughters from those nuclear nightmares for just a bit longer.