The Week in Review: Community Newspapers and Cottages

It's been a week where I haven't had as much time to write in the morning--that means I haven't had as much time to reflect and ruminate.  It's been the first week of summer term at my college, which also means I haven't had as much time to reflect and ruminate.  I've also been doing a 10 day modified shred (no alcohol, very limited dairy and grains, more exercise), so my head space has been occupied with that attempt.

Let me now capture some additional insights I've had as the week has gone by.

--Like the rest of the nation, I was both shocked (and to be honest, not shocked) over the shooting at the community newspaper in Maryland.  I am aware of how many VERY ANGRY people cross my path; it is not lost on me that any of them might be full of murderous intentions.  What makes people snap and show up at a school or work place with a firearm?

--The fact that it was a community paper also shocked me; I'd have been less shocked if a murderously angry person showed up at The Washington Post with a gun. 

--I have close friends who have worked on community newspapers.  My own college newspaper was closely aligned with The Newberry Observer, the community newspaper for the town where my undergraduate school was located.  I remember one long ago night, where we watched our college newspaper rolling (literally) off the presses at that local paper.  It was so cool to see how the paper was physically produced and to know the journalists who wrote the words that rolled off those presses.

On to other aspects of the week:

--The visit of the camp counselors from Sunday to Friday morning went smoothly.  They were the first people to stay in the cottage since Hurricane Irma.  I was slightly worried that we'd discover something major that needed to be repaired once they were there using the water and the electricity.  But it seems to be fine.

--So on to the next question:  what next?  Most immediately, the cottage will be a holding place for the stuff that needs to come out of the main house so that the floors can be done.  We plan to do the floors in 2 stages, moving half the house to the other half.  But some stuff, like boxes of books, could live in the cottage until we're done.

--It felt somewhat strange, having the counselors here, having people live in the cottage again.  Unlike last year's counselors, they used the pool, which we told them was O.K.  We didn't swim with them, in part because they would only be here a few days, and we wanted to give them time off away from people, since they had intense days leading Vacation Bible School.  And the one day that we did swim in the evening, I felt a bit strange, knowing they might return at any moment.  It's good to remember these feelings, as we consider letting others use the cottage.

--I wanted to take pictures of the cottage after last Saturday's intense work.  As I looked through them, I was struck by the monastic retreat effect that we created:

The bedroom looks cozy, at least in this picture.  A headboard would make it better:

It's not a kitchen that my younger self would love.  My younger self baked in huge batches.  But perhaps it's a kitchen for how we live now (minus the dishwasher and the microwave that many people would want):

--As I've thought about the future of the cottage this week, I've thought of monastic retreats, but as I've said before, I haven't figured out how one would market that.  Yesterday, I overheard a new student talking about her ceramics studio.  I came out of my office to say, "In one of my alternative lives, I'm a potter and a weaver, but who has room for a loom?"

--After that encounter, I went to the stairwell to get my stairs and my steps done for the hour.  As I climbed the steps, I thought, well, I think I have no room, but I have this whole cottage.  What I'd really like to do with the cottage is turn it into studio space.  Carl could do woodturning, and I could do clay or fabric.  And we could still easily clean it up for when out of town guests come.

--Of course, so far, the only out of town guests who have been keenly interested in staying in the cottage were my parents--and that's when my sister and nephew were staying in the guest room of the main house.

--I don't have much free time for a ceramics or fiber studio.  Would I make more time if I had a studio? 

--I have a vision of making interesting garden sculptures and wind chimes--but what to do with them all?  Could I make clay pieces that people might want to buy without a wheel?  I think I could.  But where would I sell them?  And would there be time for that?

These are not questions that must be answered now.  The next project:  floors and a kitchen remodel.  Then we'll see what kind of money is left and how much energy we have.

Mid-Life Arthritis and Mid-Life Goals

The other day, the morning after a day spent working on the yard, I said, "I hurt everywhere from my ribs down--well, except for my knees."  My spouse expressed surprise, but it was true.  I felt pain in every joint except for those at the knee.

I spent my younger years running long distances, and I was almost never a thin runner.  I always joked that I was grinding my bones into dust.  I always thought I'd first experience that pain in my knees.

It's been an interesting year or two, learning to deal with my arthritis and bunions in my feet.  So far, it's constrained my activities somewhat, but I remain committed to doing all that I can to avoid surgery and/or disability.

In my younger running years, I would talk about the importance of listening to the body, but now I have a different experience of that listening in my experience.  In my younger years, when I felt lazy, I would listen for an ache or pain that would give me a reason to have a day off.

Now I show up for exercise realizing that I'm never really sure what I'll experience.  Some days, I have achy feet, but I have an amazing spin class.  Other days, the ache doesn't really flare up until I'm spinning, but I can have a fairly effective work-out just by staying seated and pedaling hard.  I always begin my walk knowing that I'll be limping a bit at the end.

This morning, as I stood up the wrong way and pain shot through my foot and up my leg, I thought, well, I guess I won't be hiking the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end; that question is settled.  No marathons for me.

Of course, if I really wanted to do something, I'd see if there was a way to do it.  As with my earlier days, I'm using my pain as a reason to cross items off the list.  This morning I realized that if I'm crossing them off the list, I didn't really want to do them anyway.

Why is it so hard for me to just admit what I do and do not want to do?  Why do I remain committed to lists that I made when I was very young?  Where else in my life am I showing similar behavior and not realizing it?

I've also been thinking a lot about my writing life.  Are there projects that once were important, but now I should jettison?

Or should I think in a different way?  Are there places where I assume I can't do something, but I should really revisit those goals and apply myself?

Keeping Our Collective Chins Up

Yesterday as news spread about Justice Kennedy's retirement, I wrote this Facebook post:

"As we feel despair about Justice Kennedy resigning, it's worth remembering that he was a Reagan appointee, and that Reagan likely thought that Kennedy would make different decisions than he has made. And that outcome isn't unusual, when one looks at the history of Supreme Court justices. Let's keep our collective chins up! I want to live in hope, not in fear. I keep remembering the 1980's, when things seemed quite bleak--but then Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and the wall between East and West Germany came down without bloodshed. Perhaps we are at a turning point that we don't recogize yet."

I understand people's despair over this retirement, but let's remember that Kennedy was nominated and confirmed with everyone expecting him to be a conservative bulwark--not a moderate swing vote.  He's been a friend of lefties, as he's protected women's reproductive rights and the rights of homosexuals in a variety of cases.  I will miss his insistence that the dignity of humans must be considered in court cases.

Any time this administration does anything that's rotten (which is a daily occurrence some weeks), my Facebook feed lights up with comparisons to Hitler's rise to power.  I confess to wondering whether or not we're in a similar place to Europe in the 1930's.  I want to believe that we can learn from earlier times when fascist forces rose up rather quickly.  On my good days, I believe.  On my despairing days, I wonder where I should move.

It's good to remember that our nation has faced dark days that didn't end in an apocalypse like Hitler's Germany and World War II.  Perhaps these days are more like the McCarthy era, when people were finally so outraged by the excesses that they were able to ignore the fearmongering and insist on a better future.  Perhaps these days are more like the Nixon regime, where the nation seemed closest to Constitutional crisis, but cooler heads prevailed, and the nation did not split asunder.

In these days where the news leaves me especially prone to despair, I've been taking great solace from the posts I'm seeing from the national gathering of Lutheran youth in Houston.  It's a huge group, and I'm inspired by their hope and enthusiasm.

When I think about just giving up, I will think about these youth.  I will think about my years of training in non-violent resistance to evil.  I will remember that we can't know when the tide is about to turn, when evil leaders will be washed away to sea.

When I need courage, I'll turn to this post on my theology blog, a photo essay about how the fabric of society can be rewoven--and often, from the scraps and frazzled strips, we can make something even more beautiful.

Cottage Odds and Ends

Today is the first day of Summer quarter at my school.  It's odd to have a term starting on a Wednesday; is that why I feel off kilter?

Let me collect some odds and ends here.  Maybe, as in the past, they'll collect themselves into a poem.  Or maybe I'll see a coherent thread that I don't anticipate.

--Last year, I cooked 2 dinners for the camp counselors who came to run our Vacation Bible School program.  This year, others are cooking.  We haven't seen much of them.  But we hear that they like our cottage so much that they wanted to take dinners to go, so that they have more time to spend in the pool.  They're still here for 2 more days, so hopefully all will continue to go well.

--It's the first time we've had anyone stay there since we had the new AC installed.  I'm glad that nothing has happened that we needed to solve.  We haven't even noticed any difference in terms of water pressure. 

--When we showed them the cottage on the first day, they were very complimentary--again, a relief.  I realize that many people are trained to be polite, not to express dismay.  But one woman asked if we'd ever rent it out to say, a college student. At dinner at the parsonage, she had talked about her difficulty finding a place to stay as she goes to college in South Florida.  I said we'd be open to renting it out.

--Of course, I'm not sure how I'd really feel if she turns out to be serious.  I'd probably give it a try.  But I'd draw up some kind of document, just to clarify some items that I didn't clarify last time we had someone live in the cottage in an ongoing basis.

--On Sunday, I did some brief research on what it would take to rent it out short term, in terms of what the city requires--overwhelming!  I think that the rules and regulations are really designed towards controlling the more commercial types who are taking advantage of Air BnB.  For example, the city wants a property manager named, someone who could be on site in 60 minutes if anything happened.

--I can hardly get the cottage ready for the occasional guests who use it.   It's difficult to imagine doing this on a regular basis for paying guests.

Poetry Tuesday: "Artifacts"

A few weeks ago, I got my contributor of The Atlanta Review, which published two of my poems.  Because my writing time is short this morning, let me post one of them here.

You will likely read this and assume I'm writing autobiography, and in a way, I am.  My grandmother did have a wonderful tin of buttons; shaped by the Great Depression, she saved every button before using the cloth from worn out clothes for other purposes.  I have no idea what happened to that button tin.

She did have beautiful hydrangea bushes.  I have often wished I saved some of the soil that she created by composting, but I didn't.  I don't have her soil on the mantel, but I have lots of other artifacts that remind me of times long gone.


 Artifacts


In the end, so little is left
behind: a tin filled with every button
that ever came into the house,
a hydrangea bush blooming blue
in someone else’s back yard.

I sew a button onto one seam
of each garment in my own closet, a hidden
token to remind me of you.

Some might keep ashes,
but I dig from your compost patch,
the place where you buried
the scraps left from every meal you ever ate.

You followed the almanac’s instructions,
but I don’t have that resource.
I blend your Carolina dirt
with the sandy soil that roots
my mango tree.

Some of it I keep in a jar
that once held Duke’s mayonnaise.
I place it on the mantel
of the fireplace I rarely use,
to keep watch with a half burned
candle and a shell
from a distant vacation.

 

The Sewing Circle and the Whaling Ship

Over the week-end, we lost two important literary giants.  Both were old, so their deaths weren't surprises.  Still, more and more it seems an age is passing away.

I think of Donald Hall as the husband of Jane Kenyon, whose poems I loved more than Donald Hall's.  It wasn't until I read the article in The New York Times about Donald Hall this morning that I realized how many books he had written, including important books that purported to anthologize the decade's most important poets.

I was always astonished that he gave up an academic job with tenure to give his attention to writing and the family farm in New England.  I knew that he had cancer and expected to die before Kenyon--and then she got cancer of her own and died, while he had more decades than expected.

One of the most searing poems of loss I ever read was his, but I can't remember which one it was.  I was surprised to find out that he went on to love again, or at least date/have sex, even after writing that poem.  It's not the first time (or the last) that I've assumed to know too much about the author by reading an author's work.

At the end of the article about Hall, I clicked on this obituary about Nina Baym.  Her name is probably not as familiar to people as Hall's, but she's one of the reasons why our literary canon expanded in the 1970's.  She was one of many feminist scholars who asked why we read so many male writers and not females.  She set out to find forgotten female authors, and she did.

In the introduction to Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America, 1820-1870, she wrote “I have not unearthed a forgotten Jane Austen or George Eliot, or hit upon even one novel that I would propose to set alongside ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ Yet I cannot avoid the belief that ‘purely’ literary criteria, as they have been employed to identify the best American works, have inevitably had a bias in favor of things male — in favor, say, of whaling ships rather than the sewing circle as a symbol of the human community; in favor of satires on domineering mothers, shrewish wives, or betraying mistresses rather than tyrannical fathers, abusive husbands, or philandering suitors.”

I could argue that her influence was much further spread than Hall's.  She was the editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, and so many of us were more familiar with her ideas than we might have realized.  And because of her work, we've recovered all sorts of works of literature that might have been lost.  Those of us who see ourselves in a widening canon may have felt permission to write.  Those of us who didn't see ourselves in that widened canon went on to widen it further.

Well done, good and faithful servants.  May we all be inspired to continue the work.

Rescued from Wreckage

I am rather astonished to be able to say that after 9 months of wreckage, the cottage is back to operational again.  Make no mistake, it still needs some work:  there's a door frame that has rotted out at the bottom, the floors are still concrete (and not the attractive kind of concrete), and the furniture is a mash of leftovers.  But I think we've achieved a level of rustic-cozy, as opposed to rustic-scary.

Because yesterday was stormy, my spouse couldn't work on his yard projects, so he helped--one reason why we were able to get it done.  He focused on what still needs to be done; he's most distressed about the hot water.  The cottage and the main house share the hot water source, which means the cottage has to wait a few minutes for the water to get hot.  It takes longer now that we have an on-demand hot water heater.  At some point, we may get an on-demand system for the cottage alone.  But for now, we need to get the main house repaired so that we see how much money we really have for the cottage.

As I was working on the cottage, I was taken back to the early days of our marriage, where there was one apartment that needed some work before we moved in.  I remember that scrubbing and wondering how the final result would look.

Like that apartment, we have curtains in the cottage that we have made ourselves.  I really like them, but my spouse said, "It's not much better than students who attach sheets up to the windows with push pins."  I like that they pull the eye up from the place where the floor meets the walls, where there are still stains from the flooding.

Yes, the walls need repainting, but we didn't have time for that.  So many repairs and beautification, but so little time.

And part of the problem is a lack of vision/agreement about what to do with the cottage.  One of my friends suggested that I turn it into some sort of space--whether it be office, music/arts studio, or pool party space, that I want to be in.  I understand her point, but I tend to perch on the same pieces of furniture, even when more attractive places open up.

We've thought about doing short term rentals, but that idea is not appealing to me for a variety of reasons.  I feel like I can hardly keep up with my current obligations, so I'm hesitant to take on something as large as managing a vacation rental.  Plus my city has lots of rules and regulations, which makes me even more hesitant.

I'm also hesitant because I think that many people are expecting something luxurious, like something out of a glamorous travel magazine--and I worry that they'll be inclined to complain vociferously and bitterly when it's not what they expect.

I think of our mishmash of furniture, which I find oddly appealing, but I know that others might not.  It reminds me of Mepkin Abbey, when I first went there.  The sheets weren't Egyptian cotton, and neither were the towels.  They were clean and soft from years of use.  Each room had a different type of desk and desk chair--comfortable, but from a much earlier decade.

Right now, the cottage has that type of furniture:  two chairs that were rescued from the trash heap of a school library remodel, a rocker that has the University of South Carolina seal on it, a folding wooden chair with a cushion.  The tables are plastic and battered, but sturdy.  The kitchen has a complete set of white dishes and cooking pans--very serviceable.  The bed has a mattress that's only a few years old, slept on for less than a year.  It has new sheets that I got on sale--otherwise I couldn't have afforded the organic cotton.  It also has a cheery quilt that I made.  The towels are also new and rarely used, and thus, more luxurious than many of our towels. 

The rugs that we got last Sunday don't cover as much of the floor as I had hoped.  But they work well enough for now.

As we sat in the living room yesterday to take it all in, I thought, yes, this will work.  The camp counselors will have a clean, safe place to sleep tonight, with lots of comforts, like the breakfast foods we bought for them yesterday.  That's more than much of the world has.