Sunday Report

Yesterday was strange in many ways.  I've joked, but only half jokingly, that my current church will turn me into a Quaker.  There's something about our occasionally overamplified sanctuary that makes the idea of sitting together in silence incredibly appealing.  Yesterday was one of those overamplified days.

We stopped by the pool supply company on our way home, and then after a dose of aspiring, we ate leftovers and worked on the filter canister.  The part didn't come with the o-ring, so off we went to the Home Depot.

They didn't have it, but the Home Depot guy suggested we go to McDonald Hardware across from Lester's Diner in Ft. Lauderdale.  Since we were already halfway there, off we went.

Thank goodness for old-fashioned hardware stores!  They had the o-ring we needed and for much cheaper than the Home Depot would have had it.

Have we fixed the pool?  It's too early to tell yet.  We have a leak at the top of the filter canister.  We've tried numerous things in an attempt to fix it.

We relaxed in the pool a bit, and then it was back in the house to work on my spouse's blended class, which he got at the very last minute.  It's the first time he's taught for this dean, and he inherited a course shell that he can only change minimally--primarily, the dates.  So, we had to figure out the non-onground parts of the class and figure out the best schedule.  Then came the drudgery of changing dates in various parts of the course shell.

And then we put it all in my spouse's paper calendar, along with due dates from other classes.  There's probably an essay here about how we interact with technology.  It's probably been said before.

Today is my last day of handing out granola bars and fruit to arriving students and getting summer quarter off to a good start.  And then, tomorrow, a day of vacation!  And then back to work--how strange it will be.

Today we're wearing red, white, and blue at school.  I made a handout of the Declaration of Independence, and a sign that says, "Don't just wear red, white, and blue!  Read the Declaration of Independence!  Free copies!  Take one or two!"  I'll offer those, too, along with the granola bars, fruit, and cookies for the evening classes.

Mid-Year Reading Report

A week ago, I finished reading The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which has been on my to-read list since it first won the Pulitzer a few years ago.  I first started reading it at Mepkin Abbey, where it made a strange juxtaposition with The Underground Railroad, which I had reread the week-end before.  I was blown away by the first chapter of Nguyen's book--so lyrical, so beautiful, such promise.  No wonder it won the Pulitzer.

But after I finished, I felt much less easy about the book.  There's a torture scene at the end that lasts for a long time and is quite brutal, and I wondered if it was necessary.  It didn't haunt me the way that the torture scenes in Whitehead's novel have haunted me.  I continue to be amazed that Whitehead could explore slavery and race and history in the U.S. in ways that felt fresh.  Nguyen's writing began to feel clichéd by the end.

And I found the characters wearisome.  By the end of The Sympathizer, I hated them all.  I wasn't expecting that development.  But I kept reading, in part because I was aware of my developing negative feelings, and I knew the book had won the Pulitzer, and I wanted to see if there were better chunks to come at the end.

I was glad to return the book to the library.  Yesterday, I picked up a very different book, Rebecca Solnit's The Mother of All Questions.  I was surprised that my public library had it, since it was published so recently.

About a month ago, I felt like all roads were leading to Solnit.  I read this wonderful article on Donald Trump; it's the kind of writing that says exactly what I'm feeling, but does it so eloquently.  I admired Solnit's ability to stay somewhat sympathetic to Trump, even while excoriating him:  "We gain awareness of ourselves and others from setbacks and difficulties; we get used to a world that is not always about us; and those who do not have to cope with that are brittle, weak, unable to endure contradiction, convinced of the necessity of always having one’s own way. The rich kids I met in college were flailing as though they wanted to find walls around them, leapt as though they wanted there to be gravity and to hit ground, even bottom, but parents and privilege kept throwing out safety nets and buffers, kept padding the walls and picking up the pieces, so that all their acts were meaningless, literally inconsequential. They floated like astronauts in outer space."

I have only read one essay in Solnit's collection, and I can't wait to return to the book because the first essay, "The Mother of All Questions," is so wonderful.  She explores motherhood, and why we're so eager to know why people--especially artists--don't choose motherhood.

This kind of essay runs the risk of being trite--or worse, saying what's already been said.  But this quote gives you a sense of Solnit's insight:  "One of the reasons people lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity is the belief that children are the way to fulfill your capacity to love.  But there are so many things to love besides one's own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world" (p. 9).

It's that last part that made me catch my breath:  so much other work love has to do in the world. It's a wonderful twist, to change love from a verb to a noun that's the subject of the sentence:  love as an active agent of change in the world.

I can't wait to see what other surprises are in store for me as I read this book.

June Ends

This week has zoomed by, as has the month of June.  We started summer quarter on Wednesday, which has thrown me off.  Yesterday felt like a Wednesday because it was the third day of the new quarter.  But we seem to have had a good start.

I also met our new campus director.  He will be in charge of both the Ft. Lauderdale campus and our Hollywood campus, so the dynamic will be different than with the past executive director, the one who hired me.  From our first interactions, he seems like a person I can work with.  That's a relief.  There are so many ways that a boss can be bad.

It's been a week of handing out granola bars and fruit and leaving plates of cookies for the evening students.  I like creating an atmosphere of hospitality and welcome.

It's one of the advantages to being part of a small campus of approximately 230 students.  We can do a lot.  One of the disadvantages:  we have a small staff, so we have to do a lot, each one of us, because there's not a huge department waiting to fill in the gaps.

I've also begun to feel like maybe I'll be able to write again.  During the end of June, I was feeling tired and dried up.  It's a relief to feel creativity stirring again.

So, here's to the month of July:  it seems to have potential as a month where we can move forward, where projects become unstalled, where the seeds that we've planted begin to sprout.

The Seeds of a Short Story

--Last night, at a wonderful dinner with my Hindu writer friend, I said, "I'm about to start a story that has a woman who teaches Animation at a for-profit art school who starts having dreams where God is speaking to her.  But God doesn't look like we'd expect--God is some sort of quilter."  I asked if she wanted to write a ghost in the machine sort of story--once we would adopt a theme or a symbol and then both write a story.  She told me about the various fragments that she still plans to write into individual stories.  She's writing about twins.

I thought about a friend long ago who was pregnant with twins.  One of them died while still in the womb, but the other lives still.  I've always wondered if they would tell the child about the long-lost twin.  Would the child feel a sense of loss even if she didn't know the story?  I assume she'd feel a sense of loss if she did know the story.  But at this point, I don't think I'll be using that nugget in the story I plan to write this week-end.

--Yesterday morning, I was thinking about the elements of the story about the animator, and I thought about including a summer trip to Mepkin Abbey as part of the story.  Here's the what I was thinking two weeks ago, in an e-mail to my Sociology writer friend:

"I am thinking of writing a short story while you're gone.  It will be about a research oriented, facts-based, very cerebral person who starts having dreams about God--God always looks the same, like a female quilter (I think she'll look like either you or me, because if I made her Indian or African-American, that might be stereotypical).  God will tell her to repair the frayed fabric, and the main character won't be sure of what to do exactly.

 

I thought about making the main character a Ph.D. in Psychology, so she understands that she's not having a mental breakdown, but she's also not sure what to do next.

 

I've also been playing with a story idea about a faculty member in Animation who decides to go to theology school.  Maybe I'd be repeating ground.  Maybe I should make the Animation faculty member the cerebral person who gets visions and thinks about ghosts in the machine."

--This morning, I started the story this way:

My family thinks of me as the creative one because I named my cats. So of course I wouldn’t tell any of them when I started having the strange dreams.
--These stories all have some sort of link to social justice/activist work, and this morning, I came up with the link for this story.  The Mepkin monks once raised chickens and sold their eggs in local grocery stores.  PETA accused them of cruelty, and either took them to court or threatened to take them to court.  And the monks didn't protest.  They simply stopped raising chickens and started mushroom farming.

--I've been incubating this story for a long time.  Back in October I wrote:

I'm also intrigued by the announcement that one of the Corporate highest of the higher ups will be on the campus of my current school on Tuesday.  I wrote this e-mail to the only 2 colleague friends who would understand:

"I bet I'm the only one in the whole organization who has noticed that the Corporate guy is visiting on the feast of All Saints.

 

Oh, I will have fun with this!  I'm already crafting a short story . . ."

 

And I am having fun with it--the main character will teach Animation, and I can have fun with the idea of what animates and what deadens.  I thought about starting it this morning, but it still needs time to marinate.

 

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So this week-end, before my online class gets into high gear, I'll will grab some writing time and crank out a story.  It's been too long.
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June Recalibrations

Earlier this week, I got an e-mail that talks about the July 4 activities in the city--July 4 seems so far away, and yet it's not--how did it get to be late June?

If April was lost to the world of binders and accreditation visits, June has been lost to my online class and my Mepkin trip.  When I look back on June, let me remember those events as the reason that I got so little written during the month of June. 

Let me not be too hard on myself.  Let me also remember the month of June as the time when I finally stopped the progression of weight, slow pound by slow pound up the scale.  This has been the first month since Thanksgiving when I end the month weighing a smidge less than I began the month.  I hope to remember the month of June as the time I began the return to healthier habits, all the same healthy habits I'm always working at keeping in my life.

I have been feeling a bit of despair at the thought of sending out manuscripts.  But maybe that's O.K.--it's summer, after all, and not as many places are reading now.  Let me use this time to get back into the habit of writing more and revising more and typing some poems into the computer.

Let me also remember this month as a time of inspiration.  I have hopes that in a year or two, we'll see increased retention at my campus.  We'll talk about all sorts of reasons, but I'll look back to June, when I stood in the lobby with a basket of granola bars and fruit to welcome students back to campus.

Speaking of that basket, it's time to get ready for today:  granola bars and fruit await another set of students coming back for summer quarter.

Nothing Says Welcome Back Like Granola Bars and Fruit

Increasing retention is one of my main tasks as an administrator on the academic side of my school.  We know that students leave for all sorts of reasons, and many of them are for reasons I can't fix:  a sick family member, for example, or a move to a new state.  But what can we fix?

That will be one of my primary questions in the months to come.  I want to try a combination of methods that I'm fairly sure will work:  more tutoring, for example.  But I also want to try some experiments.

At a different campus of my school, a former director of education had one of the highest retention rates ever in the history of the school.  How did he do it?  He had a passion for beach clean up, and he invited students to participate. 

Now maybe there was another dynamic at work.  But what if retention is as simple as making students feel like they're making a contribution to something larger than themselves?

Let me ponder that idea a bit longer before launching any possibilities.  Today, I'm doing something simpler.  I'm offering food in honor of the first day of class.  And my plan is to do this for the next 3 days.

Now, I'm not bringing homemade treats.  I want something that I can hand to students as they head to class.  So yesterday I went out and bought a huge variety of granola bars.  I also bought those small oranges (seedless!) and bananas, for those who want to be very healthy.

I'm going to hand out the granola bars because they're much more expensive and popular, and I want my supply to last for a few days.  I'm hoping that having some breakfast foods will help students feel welcomed back in a different way than we've usually done.  Our usual way is to stand in the lobby saying, "Welcome back!"  Now we'll have that--along with treats!

In my work through the years on various church councils, I was always the one asking how we could add food to an event.  Some people got frustrated with that approach, but I always believed that food could serve as quite a motivator.  And some of our students have some food scarcity issues--students across the nation suffer more hunger and homelessness than many of us would think.

I'm thinking of ways to help students who have food scarcity issues.  We have a student lounge with a long counter.  I've wondered about having a crockpot of soup always at the ready.  We have a coffee maker where students can make coffee.  Why not soup?

I'll continue thinking about these initiatives and since I know that many of us are responsible for student success, I'll keep posting ideas and progress reports here.  Maybe we can all inspire each other.

Twenty Years of Harry Potter

Apparently the world of Harry Potter has been with us 20 years.  There's a Facebook something going around that alerted me.

I read the first book and enjoyed it well enough.  I enjoyed the first few movies even more.  The 5th movie, I think, is the one that I declared too dark:  I didn't mean the subject matter, but the fact that it was poorly lit, and I could scarcely tell what was happening on my screen.  I think it was the first one that I saw on the small screen; it was also the last Harry Potter movie that I saw.

After awhile, I just gave up on the idea that I could catch up and stay caught up, especially the year when 2 movies were released.  The world of Harry Potter joins Game of Thrones (also roughly 20 years old) and countless other projects that I'll likely never experience--while they may be worthy, time is so short these days.  Knowing that I'll need 80+ hours to get caught up means it won't happen.

What interests me more about the anniversary of Harry Potter is how the phenomena might have shaped our expectations as writers.  I'm remembering seeing J.K. Rowling on various talk shows that no longer exist.  I remember hearing her talk about scratching out the story on napkins while she tried to survive on welfare.

I remember thinking, if she can do it, I can do it!  And while I've written boxes full of material, my material success has yet to arrive for me the way it did for Rowling.  There have been moments when opportunities came my way--and then, editors left, good pay rates evaporated--sigh.

But let me not get bogged down in despair--let me be happy that so much good work awaits my reading and viewing time during a different, future time of my life.  If I find myself to be a lonely woman in elder age, I'll be happy for these great works that have been waiting for me.

And let me be happy that the writing still gives me so much joy that I feel frustrated when I don't have time to do it.