Sailboat or RV?

Yesterday's post made me think about my dream of taking off in an RV and travelling west.  I love the idea of having my house along with me, seeing the sights, stopping at any attraction that intrigued me.  The RV as modern covered wagon!

My spouse loves the idea of taking off in a sailboat.  I like that idea too, but I know less about sailing.  Driving an RV seems similar enough to other kinds of driving.  Sailing seems so different.

But I do love the idea of a smaller space, a travelling existence.  I love the idea of seeing parts of the world that others won't get to see.

My younger self wanted to backpack the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, or to ride my bicycle from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific.  Now I like the idea of a more comfortable bed, a less physically demanding experience.

Right now, I'm lucky to have a job that pays well, so I'll carry on in that existence.  I'll put money away, because I can't count on always having that job, and I'm not optimistic about the future of full-time jobs for people with Ph.D.s in English.  When I need a mental vacation, I'll daydream of journeys, whether under sail or via wheels.

Homes on the Range

We have cancelled our Netflix subscription.  I got tired of those red packets, those movies that got old while waiting for me to have a chance to watch them.  I think my spouse finally watched every Western in their catalogue, and he was having trouble finding anything else to watch.

I miss it occasionally.  I don't often think ahead, and thus, sometimes we have a rainy afternoon where a movie would be nice.  Luckily, we have a fairly large collection of VHS tapes and DVDs.

That's how we came to be watching Open Range on Memorial Day week-end, even though we'd seen it before.  It started playing with the director's commentary on, and Kevin Costner was so fascinating that not only did we listen all the way through the commentary, we also watched a short documentary that came on the bonus DVD.

It's always interesting to hear how directors put together movies; I'm a sucker for those kind of insights.  Any creative process, even if it's one I'm unlikely to participate in, intrigues me.  But I found myself even more interested in the history behind the movie.

In an early shot of the cowboys crossing the river, Kevin Costner talked about all the people who likely drowned as they crossed similar rivers, people just swept away.  And we'll never know who they are.

He talked about the immigrants who came to settle the west.  He observed that they were thinking less about themselves and more about 4-5 generations out.  They knew that they were taking on a rough life, but they hoped it would pay off for their descendents.

He pointed out how often towns were built in inconvenient places.  They weren't well thought out.  One person put up a house, and then someone else settled nearby because there was safety in numbers, and pretty soon, you've got a town.  Often, you've got a town in a place that's susceptible to weather (floods, especially), because people weren't thinking about that.

He pointed out how heavily the white people lived on the land.  Along the way of his commentary, I was reminded of how much research Kevin Costner has done on the American west.  I've never seen Dances with Wolves.  Now I might be tempted.

There's more than one shot of white picket fence.  Costner points out that you fence something in when you're not really sure that you own it.  He pointed out how the white people moved west and began fencing everything in, and soon, a way of life, driving cattle from Canada to Mexico (or the reverse) was gone.

His commentary reminded me of Larry McMurtry, another master of the American west.  My spouse and I both LOVE Lonesome Dove.  In fact, we might have watched it instead of Open Range, if we had felt we had more time.

McMurtry has also devoted much of his nonfiction writing to exploring the American west.  One of my favorites is Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.  He reminds us:  "The myth of the American cowboy was born of a brief twenty years' activity just before railroads criss-crossed the continent north-south and east-west, making the slow movement of livestock impractical"  (Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, page 50).  In just 20 years, a way of life came into being and passed away. 

We tend to think that we're the first generation to deal with a dizzying pace of change, but I suspect that most every generation would tell you that the change that they must deal with is more than any other generation has ever had to bear.  It's truly astonishing to think of how the land west of the Mississippi River changed from 1860 to 1900.  It both makes me sad and gives me hope for our own age.  Humans are tougher than we give ourselves credit for being.  If we could settle that land in 40 short years (and yes, I know that Native Americans would tell a different story), we can survive the hard times stalking our country now.

Natasha Trethewey: Poet Laureate

I am SO thrilled to hear that Natasha Trethewey will be our next poet laureate.  How many ways am I thrilled?  Let's see, she's my age, 46, when the last several poet laureates have been into their 80's.  Nothing wrong with being older, of course.  But how wonderful to have a younger poet laureate, my generation!  In fact, I think she's the youngest poet laureate ever.

Let us now play what I call the Norton Anthology game.  When I got my first Norton Anthology of American Lit, I looked at the birth years of all the living poets.  They had all been born long before me.  I suspect that now, there might be one or two born after me.  I'm not brave enough to look anymore.

But back to Natasha Trethewey.  Not only is she younger, but she's female.  She's biracial (her father was Caucasion, her mother African-American) and from the U.S. South.  Our first Southern poet laureate,  since Robert Penn Warren, unless you count Rita Dove, who has lived in the South for many years.

And she's a fabulous poet.  Breathtaking.  Native Guard is one of my all-time favorite books of poetry.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember my blog post about Natasha's Trethewey's February 2010 reading at Broward College.  I remember more for the question and answer period afterwards as for her reading, which was fabulous in and of itself.

I asked her how she put together her book Native Guard, which weaves poems of Civil War soldiers together so seamlessly with poems about her mother's death.  Here's what I wrote 2 years ago:
"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 recounted 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."

Much as I love Natasha Trethewey, I wouldn't want to be the person who has to decide on the one person who should hold the post of poet laureate.  We live in an amazing poetry time.  It would be tough to decide on just one person to honor.

I pondered this fact as I read this article about Natasha Trethewey in The New York Times:

"In a phone interview explaining his choice James Billington, the librarian of Congress, said: 'We’re not necessarily on some kick to find a younger poet. The more I read of it, American poetry seems extremely rich in diversity, talent and freedom of expression, and she has a voice that is already original and accomplished. I have an affinity for American individuals who are absolutely unique, and I think that this is one.'


He first became aware of Ms. Trethewey (pronounced TRETH-eh-way) when she gave a reading at the National Book Festival in 2004: 'I admired the way she had a certain classical sound but also moved easily from traditional forms to free verse. And then when I began reading her poems for myself, that impression was just confirmed. It seemed very natural, all of a piece.' He added: 'I go to a fair number of poetry readings, and I’m not always motivated to go back and read the poems. But in her case I was.'

Indeed.  And now, maybe a whole nation will be inspired to read her poems.

The Temperature at Which Paper Burns

Ray Bradbury died yesterday, after a rich, long life.  You may think of him as a sci-fi writer, but he was so much more.

In this post at the NPR website, Peter Sagal says, "Heinlein, Asimov and Bradbury; they were the tripod (invasive, moving, with lasers) on which my science fiction education was built in the 1970s."

For me, it would be Clarke, Asimov, and Bradbury, and I liked Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury much better than Isaac Asimov, but Bradbury was my favorite of them all.  I haven't returned to those authors much, but ten years ago, I did read The Martian Chronicles again.  I found the collection just as awe inspiring and heart breaking as I did when I first read the book in my younger teen-age years.

Other sci-fi I checked out from the library.  I bought Ray Bradbury books.

To understand what this statement means, you must understand my teen-age economy.  I baby-sat, I saved my allowance, all to do my favorite thing:  to go to B. Dalton books and allow myself to buy anything I wanted.  I would go home with armloads of books.

I did the same thing at the library, but when I was younger, there was a magic to actually owning the books.  I was the kind of reader who consumed books and reread them again and again.  I made mental notes and wrote my own stories and wanted to do what my favorite authors did.

Ray Bradbury did so much, from creating imaginative works set on other planets, to writing plays and screenplays, to writing works of realism verging on nostalgia that remember his childhood hometown, to advice to other creative writers.

Now Bradbury would object to being called a sci-fi writer.  He considered Fahrenheit 451 (named when he called the fire department to find the temperature at which paper burns) his only sci-fi work.

I'm sure there will be future graduate students who return to his work and write dissertations that show how much of what he wrote about came to pass.  But his real accomplishment came in not letting the sci-fi part swamp the human part.

This story in The Washington Post includes this wonderful quote:  “'Bradbury took the conventions of the science-fiction genre — time travel, robots, space exploration — and made them signify beyond themselves, giving them a broader and more nuanced emotional appeal to general readers,' said William F. Touponce, a founder and former director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis."

Later, in college, I would discover feminist science fiction, and my world would change again.  But I'll always feel grateful to the guys, as I think of them; I mean both the generation of men who wrote the stories and the sci-fi geeks at my school who extolled their virtues.  I'm a sucker for a book recommendation; if you extol the wonders of a book, I'll likely pick it up.

I still enjoy a good sci-fi book, although my tastes do run to dystopian fiction:  life after the apocalypse.  The Martian Chronicles fits that bill nicely.

It's also perhaps the first book of linked short stories that I ever read.  I was fascinated with that form right from the start, and the fiction project I'm working on now is a book of linked stories.  That form--linked short stories (no matter how tenuous the link)--is so flexible and adaptable.  At the time, I remember being both puzzled and intrigued as I realized that the stories could stand alone--indeed, many of them had been published as stand-alone stories in magazines, but that they worked well together.

I was also amazed at Bradbury's ability to create a masterful short story, a masterful novel, whatever he attempted to do.  Even at a young age, I realized that few writers have the skills to work masterfully across genres.

Bradbury is one of those writers who made me want to be a writer.  I have this vision of Ray Bradbury and Adrienne Rich in Heaven--what a rich conversation they would have.  Are they bothered by Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson who are off making music in that corner?  Or are they all singing, making new celestial songs that we can hear, as if a distant star sent music back to us?

Here are some Bradbury quotes to inspire you to be the best creative person you can be:


“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”



“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”


“First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”



“I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

My Not So Big Job Announcement

Some day, I dream of having a really big job announcement:  a wonderful teaching position in an MFA program or being the creator of a program that will infuse more creativity into seminary/divinity studies or some community program where I'll bring the joy of creativity or spirituality (or both!) into the lives of regular people.  Some day, I'll be telling you about the forthcoming publication of a book with a spine that I wrote.

Today, my announcement is much smaller.  Today, I let you know that I'm the Arts and Crafts director for this year's Vacation Bible School.  I'm both excited and terrified.


One of my spin class buddies advised me to give them what they don't get at home: glue and glitter. They get crayons, but not glitter.


I joked that if I give them glitter, I'll never be allowed to be arts and crafts director again.

I waited a long time before volunteering for the position. Our pastor kept sending out lists of available positions. I wanted the arts and crafts director position, but I thought that surely someone else would want it, and I didn't want to be too greedy.
Finally, after several weeks I volunteered, but offered to step aside if anyone else really wanted it. We are in one of those VBS years where we barely have enough people to do everything, so my volunteering was greeted with relief.

We buy one of those pre-packaged VBS kits, and this year, we're not using the one from the Lutheran publishing house. It was chosen by the woman who was going to be the VBS director before life intervened and she had to let go of that responsibility. The kit that we bought doesn't come with very much--oh no, they want you to buy more, more, more.  What a racket.

We will not be buying the arts and crafts projects and kits from them. I looked at the projects that they offer, and they baffle me. They're more science fair than glue and glitter.
We will be making noisemakers, because my husband will be doing fun things with drums and noisemakers, and we don't already have enough of those. We will decorate t-shirts. We will make butterflies or empty tomb gardens or other things to remind us of Christ's resurrection. We will do things with paper mosaics, perhaps. Maybe we'll collage if I get enough old magazines.

My fear is that I have twenty minutes--what if the projects take too much time? What if they don't take enough time?

And then there's the fear that lurks beneath: what if the kids think the projects are stupid? And by extension, what if they think I'm stupid?

Creative folks everywhere are probably familiar with fears that run along these lines: what if I can't pull off what I'm attempting to do? What if I'm just stupid? What if I never have a good idea? What if I think I'm brilliant but everyone else knows I'm not?

I'm hoping that if I approach each night with joy and enthusiasm, it will all be just fine.  I'm sure it will.  I'm always amazed at how much the kids love Vacation Bible School, no matter what we do.  To me, it feels too much like real school, with classes and a schedule that keeps them moving from activity to activity and food that's rather institutional.  But children love it.  And so we do it.  And each year, we do it again.

The Radiant Ways of Margaret Drabble

Today is the birthday of Margaret Drabble--how I have loved Margaret Drabble!

I first read her slim book, The Millstone, in a grad school course on the modern British novel.  Most of the books in that course seemed modern, in comparison to the Victorian Literature which also consumed me, but also curiously not modern.  The Millstone was no exception.

The book has a narrator who's deeply conflicted about sex:  modern or not modern or post-modern?  She decides to have a child out of wedlock, which shocks her sister:  modern or not modern or post-modern?   She tries not to tell many people about her pregnancy, so that she can keep plowing through grad school studies and doing what she considers to be important work in the field of literary criticism:  modern or not modern or post-modern?

The language seems rooted in the early 1960's, but the issues weren't unfamiliar to us back in the late 80's, when we took the class.  Some of them seemed just as daunting, if not more so:  work/family/lifestyle choices still stymie so many of us.

I liked Drabble's writing, so when I saw a copy of The Radiant Way at the remainders table in a mall bookstore, I bought it.  What a revelation!  It continues to be one of my favorite books.  It depicts the 80's in a realistic way that still takes my breath away.  Yet, Drabble is also doing fun things with figurative language.  And what a great trio of characters.  This book continues Drabble's exploration of the issues that both delight and bedevil modern women.

I don't always love her more recent novels, although I did love The Sea Lady.  Perhaps it's because her later novels explore what it means to be a woman growing older in our society, and those issues terrify me--and her books don't always offer comfort.  Most of us will not escape the ravages of age, no matter how much money we have.  Even if we travel through the landscape relatively unscathed, the ones we love or the ones to whom we have obligations, will not be so lucky.

The other day I wandered through the public library and found myself saying, "There's nothing here that I want to read."  Maybe it's time to return to my own library.  I've bought books for just this day.  Maybe it's time to return to The Radiant Way--and then the sequels!

My Third Skin Cancer--in Poem Form!

Yesterday I wrote this post about my third skin cancer, complete with photo (non-gruesome since my skin cancer is quite small).  I wrote about the genesis of a poem coming to me in the parking lot of the dermatologist when I was done.  Here's the original that inspired my poem, at least in the rhythm of the first line.

My Last Duchess


By Robert Browning


That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or, 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart – how shall I say – too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark' - and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
- E'en that would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

I copied the poem into a Word document and then separated it chunk by chunk to make it less intimidating.  And then, line by line, I wrote my version.  I even tried to keep a rhyme scheme in the lines where a rhyme scheme exists.

I had fun writing it, but I'm not sure that I'll do much more than post it here.  But then again, who knows?

My Third Cancer


That’s my third cancer, lurking near my neck,

Looking as if it were harmless. I call
This spot a harmless one: I spent years
Out in the sun, and now I’m marked.
Feel free to observe closely. I said
“Harmless” by design, for even
Strangers picture scars and scalpels,
As they look (once I’ve pointed
Out my scars, this one here, and here, and now here)
And seemed they would ask me, if not rude,
How such a scar came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus.
Sir, ‘twas not
The way it once was, sunscreens applied
Before we left the house: perhaps
It was the childhood summers spent outside or poolside
Sunning smeared with baby oil and tracking
Time spent on each side for an even tan: such stuff
Was normal, we thought, and cause enough
For loving summers outside. We had
A view—how shall I say?—of beauty bronzed
And gold; we loved that glow,
The burnished skin, and for it, we’d do anything.
Sir, ‘twas all one! A teenage tan,
A noonday run across the decades’ span,
A careless afternoon at the beach that led to sunburn
Or a tanning bed, no lessons learned
From every exposure – all and each
We loved because we thought it made us look healthy
Or , at least. We approved, -- good! But approved
All efforts -- it seems strange now-- as if we’d escape
The ravages of the radiation of the sun’s rays
Like our ancestors did. Do you forget we thought
We had an ozone layer? Even had we known
The results -- (which we did not) -- the cancers
Dotting our bodies, the age spots
Down the road; possible damage
To our eyes -- yes if we’d known,
We’d have ignored the facts or assumed
That we would be the exception, not the rule
-- E’en then we’d have needed sunscreen; which I choose
Never to use. Oh, sir, I spray occasionally, no doubt,
During the rare beach outing, but who doesn’t
Sporadically? If out, do I go to the store?
I do not. Will ‘t please you rise? We’ll gather
Our picnic together. I repeat
We’ll have a shelter at the park along with trees
So that we can eat and enjoy the breeze
Although along with bugspray we’ll take this lotion,
With an SPF of 70, our modern magic potion,
Allowing us to go outside. OK, we’ll go
To the park together, sir. Notice, though,
My shirt of woven mesh, my predilection,
Which in any weather gives protection!