The halls are alive

With the sound of flat screen televisions and Target furniture being hauled out of rooms and into waiting Subarus, Priuses, and Jettas. School’s out, and this blog shall soon be back on–I’ve been chewing over a longish, “welcome back, self” post this past week. Plus, I’m soon moving on to Ann Arbor and the next sixish years of my life, and that is sure to bring out some of the angst that brings on blogging. So much to look forward to!

But, in the mean time, as a tribute to the students I’ve worked with over the past nine months through their ups, downs, and too late to ILLs, I’ll share my favorite of the short films at this year’s student film fest. If you thought it was pretty sweet to be on a boat, that just means… you’ve never been at Grinnell!

Okay, well, maybe you had to be here….

Friday Red: The Scarlet and Black

And yet another new context for the color red on Friday nights: Tonight, D and I spent the bulk of our evening watching Division III college basketball. We got to witness our team, the Pioneers, defeat the St. Norbert Green Knights (who had beat us earlier in the season) in thrilling fashion to advance to the finals of the Midwest Conference Tourney. Tomorrow, they take on the Lawrence Vikings for the title of all-out champ and entrant into the Div III national tournament come March.

Basketball has been one of our unexpected discoveries this year. It started when I met the new women’s bball coach during new faculty orientation. We’re about the same age, and we have “I don’t really know if I should be called faculty solidarity,” so we hit it off. Being friends with her naturally led to learning a thing or two about the game, and that led to being at the women’s opening game, and from there it was a small step to being at the men’s opening game, which was the same night, immediately following. 

When it comes to basketball, I’ve never been a big fan of the men’s game. As in tennis and soccer, I rarely connect to men playing. Maybe because the play is too fast for a non-athlete like myself to really follow, or maybe because male athletes play like a**holes a large amount of the time. But the Pioneers drew me in with The System. The System works like this: they run a full-court press, play as little defense as possible, and engineer all their plays around creating openings for 3 point shots.

Did that last sentence not mean anything to you? Yeah, that was me. Last fall. Before I started watching The System.

It didn’t take long before I was an all out Pioneer basketball fan. Now, I sometimes even switch to college basketball on television when I want to kill time. Crazy. I know, right? 

I don’t know if this fascination will hold over next year, when I no longer see the athletes on the court as students first, coming to the library, doing their liberal arts thing and being great at sinking 3’s at the same time. It might be a one-year thing, like this job, like being able to hang out with the basketball coach and a physics prof and a Classics prof at the same time, all of them conversant in this game we spend our evenings watching, quietly breaking plans with non-fans and getting up early to get our real work done beforehand so we can. 

I’m not thinking about this right now, reviewing key plays in mind as I get ready to go to bed. I’m thinking about how I hope this team full of gifted, but relatively short, seniors can recover from tonight’s tough game to play their hearts out tomorrow, because in all likelihood, it’s going to be the last game of their careers. I’m hoping that the 3’s sink convincingly and Lawrence falls all over itself trying to outrun our Pioneers. I’m nervous about our injured point guard and the sophomore guard who is being asked to learn how to take his place. This is a distraction, but I sometimes think it is an important one. Most of us don’t win or lose in 40 minute spurts, but watching those who do can remind us how important it is to focus and take the risk of believing we can succeed. When it matters, the outcome is never certain. You can play a technically perfect game and lose–it takes more than that in the long run. You have to do your best every minute you can and take the chance it won’t be enough. Sometimes it won’t be. Learning to step into those moments honestly is a lesson that can come in many forms–Greek quizzes or Moby Dick final papers or conference finals–and I like being at a school that sees it that way.

Long overdue pics from the Iowa: State Fair edition

The very first thing we did upon D’s arrival in Iowa in August was take a trip to the Iowa State Fair.

Our goal: only eat food on a stick. (Or, a drumstick, as the case may be.)

Can’t skip the corn dog:

These enormous turkey drumsticks were amazingly delicious:

This beer brought to you by the Budweiser Clydesdales:

This is a cow:

But is it an Americow? We’d have to check the passport to be sure:

You can’t kill the rooster!

A summary of my life since last I blogged in the form of unwritten blog post titles

October 1st: Looks like I’m on hiatus (Read: Must finish MFA thesis to become MFA)

October 9th: Do I stay or do I go now? Or: When a one year job can become a two year job, and you decide to say screw the economy and throw it all away to try to go to more graduate school!

October 20th: I. Am. 27. And vow never to complain about that again.

October 22nd: Defended!

October 27: Am exhausted.

November 1: Knock, knock, knocking on my neighbor’s doors

November 3: ahhhhhhh so scared

November 4: yes!!!!!!!!!!!!

November 4, 10 something pm CST: Oh, that acceptance speech was going so well until he misused the word “enormity.” Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

November 9: Mormons confuse me–some of them do, anyway

November 10: Manuscript margin drama

November 13: Binding fee receipt drama

November 15: More naked people in my library! And this time it’s 25 degrees out!

November 18: Mailed my manuscript!

November 19: Strep throat: not just for first graders anymore

November 23: Having blankets on your bed can make you so much warmer at night

…and that brings us up to the present, which I hope will mark a return to the blogosphere!

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You really expect me to get work done?

It’s Friday, 4:45pm, and the library is filled with naked running people.

It takes me a minute to figure out why there are running naked people in the library, but I soon do: they are all whispering “Come to the Duke! It’s tomorrow!”

And then I realize, this is the entire cross country team, advertising their biggest meet of the year. Naked.

We did our own share of clothes-free running at Kenyon, but we always did it in the middle of the night. So, as my husband just emailed me in response to my first panicked email re: NRP, these cornfield college kids have got balls.

But did I really need to see them?

Oh college, I am surely much older than your students now.

It’s now 4:52, and the naked people have left the building. But really, is it even any use to get back to this institutional repository content survey?

No, no indeed. HOME!

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The calm before

The more accurate title for this post would be simply “updates”–but I’m not the type to leave it simple now, am I?

D got here on August 9, ending a 40 day long distance period which, I am relieved to say, wasn’t hard at all on my end. Well, maybe it was hard for the first two days. And then I had a grand, perhaps long overdue realization: I can do this. I can live on my own. Once upon a time I could fill my whole day all by myself, and happily. This isn’t to say that being in a serious relationship and then being married had stunted me, I think, but more to say, it’s easy to lose track of your capacity for independence. It was much harder for him, w/o the novelty of a new job and a new town to distract him. But for me, it was perfect. I had a month to settle in to a new group of colleagues and a new set of responsibilities, and more importantly, a month in which no one wanted to talk to me when I got home, which made it much, much easier to get my butt in the chair. And in the chair is where it needed and continues to need to be–the radio silence I’ve once again slipped into over the past couple weeks is mostly due to the fact that I’m making a sustained effort to get my writing act together and get my head straightened out to commit to meeting some (mostly self-imposed) deadlines. I will be submitting work to journals this fall. I will be making a final decision about more graduate school. I will be coming up with a book-length manuscript to call a thesis and then tear apart and call my first book. As the Mistress of Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds and I discussed over local food in Iowa City this summer, it is important to decide these things and commit to the work it takes to mean them, regardless of the outcome. The outcome is not what I own. The work is what I own. I’m glad I had a month to practice before writing officially became the reason I only see my husband about two hours a day, even though we once again live in the same state. And that’s not just fine, it’s as it should be, at least for right now.

Shortly after D arrived, the rest of the new faculty arrived for their two-day orientation. At the college where I work, librarians are considered faculty (my title will actually be assistant professor now that I’ve completed my terminal library degree). Although I have absolutely no illusions about the parity of my intellectual accomplishment on this front (in fact, I have a major insecurity complex, as you probably know), it makes a huge difference to be included even if in name only. Instead of being shunned to my office, I got to spend two days with everyone else who is new around here, and they got to see me as some kind of peer. That’s important for the library, politically, and it’s important for me socially. It was also wonderful that tenure track and temporary (they call us “term”) faculty were treated equally during the orientation, and will be treated equally over the next year when it comes to conference funding and grant consideration. There’s a lot of very progressive things about this school that I will miss when I move on.

Anyway, the long and short of orientation was, D & me now have a social life! After a month without so much as a beer at the bar, we’re headed into our second straight weekend of having places to go and people to see. It’s just like new student orientation–this is a small town, and this is the time when everyone is silently asking will you be my friend, so I’m hitting up as many barbeques and happy hours as I get invited to. When I’m too busy, I can stop, but for now I can work around what feels pretty darn important–getting friends, being a friend. And last weekend’s Madonna’s 50th party left no doubt in my mind that indeed, I have found a fitting niche for myself this year, a place where I am viewed as not just an okay but a good dancer. Scary, right?

Things are about to get more intense as new students are pouring into campus as I type and classes start on Thursday. I think my workload, which has been kind of light, is going to take off, and I say bring it on. I’m ready to earn my keep around here. Still, it’s been nice to ease into it, and to have had some time to myself.

All of this is not to say that I’m not missing the company of a few select Floridians, ex-Floridians, and others. I have a few more letters I’m meaning to write, and some thoughts on other stuff I hope to get up here soon, and (bonus!) Iowa state fair pics. But right now I’m off to Saturday red, Iowa style. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Raku

So I went to the annual raku workshop at the local art center this morning. The woman who is in charge spends all year throwing random pots, and then they invite a couple of traveling raku specialists to come and have a firing day for anyone who wants to come. For five bucks, I figured it was the perfect way to have some fun making something that didn’t involve line breaks or punctuation. Raku is a great antidote to controlling-itis, as it is more or less completely impossible to control. The glazes look different every time they are applied, and the final color depends on the idiosyncrasies of the glaze itself,  the day it was fired, the weather, the way it gets pulled out of the kiln, etc. For example, the blue color glaze you see there was called copper sand, and in the demonstration pieces, it usually came out brown. Not today! All I knew is, I wanted to make a funky looking whatever. You can still see where I tried to plan it a little too much, but I had a lot of fun. I could definitely see that getting addictive if you had access to materials on a regular basis. But one pot was enough for me today. Below, the inside view, where I put a special extra sparkly glaze.

Close call #1

So, on Sunday night, I went to bed after a lovely weekend of all things summer–trip to the Farmer’s Market, iced coffee at the cafe, fresh peaches, a blockbuster movie–with cooling night air and the sound of crickets coming through my open window. Several hours later, I woke up to the sound of wind. And thunder, and rain, but mostly the wind. The power had gone out, so the house alternated between pitch black and greenish white from the intense lightning. I tried to look out the window, but I couldn’t see past the curtain of rain being blown sideways by the wind. But I couldn’t hear the rain, then, I could only hear the wind, which was getting louder and louder. I remembered that I had left the living room windows open to get the cool air at night, so I walked out to shut them. I put my hand on the first window, and I could feel it shaking . I could feel the gusts of air coming in it, soaking me with rain and pushing me backwards. That’s when I forgot about the windows. I went back to my room, put on flip flops, remembered that I had dropped a hoody sweatshirt at the end of my bed, and put that on too. Then I got the cats, first the big one who is scared of everything and then the smaller one, one in each arm, and I headed for the basement as fast as I could. The smaller cat jumped out of my arms and ran down the stairs of her own accord, but the bigger one started yowling and lunging out of my arms to stick her claws in the wooden railing on the way down. I had to stop and pry her feet away from the railing to make it all the way down.  Meanwhile, the wind is yet louder and the door is shaking in its frame.

As I’ve blogged about earlier, I’m not a big panicker about this stuff, but I do take it seriously. It was only when I was sitting on the basement steps (to prevent any cats from running back upstairs) that I realized that I was shaking. I had absolutely no desire to make a return trip up the stairs to grab something else valuable. No way. My cell phone and glasses had been right next to the bed, but I didn’t think to grab either of those. So all I could do was wait, and listen for the sound of something coming, at which point I would have tried to grab the cats again and get under the stairwell itself.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. There were no tornadoes in our vicinity (one funnel cloud 50 miles away that never touched down), although there were straight line winds up to 100mph. I will say this: I never used to be able to imagine what the freight train sound would be if a tornado came, but now I think I can. Imagine it. We lost power for six hours, which I guess is a long time for Iowans, but nothing for me. It definitely shook me up a bit–I had a hard time falling asleep last night, in part I think b/c I was nervous that it was going to happen again. Which it might any time during the summer. But next time I’ll be more ready.

After it was much quieter, I did go back up for my cellphone, and called D to check the map. He confirmed that there had a been a severe thunderstorm, and that it had formed quickly. The weather service called a severe storm warning at 4:05am, and I was probably in the basement by 4:20.

As I calmed down, I realized that I really really need a better plan next time. Flashlights are useless in the closet. I had no time to feel around in the closet. I now have one by my bed and one already in the basement, along w/ a change of clothes and the hand crank radio. The cat cages are down there now too. And oh yeah, I’m going to find out what my renter’s insurance needs in the way of proof of ownership, so that there is never a temptation to go grab stuff. Not that there is when you’re really scared.

Anyway, if there’s anything of universal value in my experience here, I would say it’s just that I can confirm that when things get scary, you don’t think as you normally would and you don’t have much time. I only managed to do what I had run through in my head many times in the past when thinking about tornadoes: put something on your feet and over your arms, get the cats. Like I said, I forgot my glasses and my cellphone even though they were right next to me, b/c they were not part of the plan. Have a plan. Practice it mentally. You might need it.

Letters

The days since I started working at this library have felt a little bit like being a kid in a candy store, or a college freshman in the age of Napster–there’s a sudden feeling that everything I want in terms of books is suddenly right here, and it’s summer, and quiet, and not a lot of stuff is checked out.  This is because I want a lot of poetry, fiction, and criticism, and that’s kind of what liberal arts schools specialize in. So naturally I’ve been checking out way more books that I realistically have time to read. But one of them did get read last night, a book I haven’t seen in a good long while which was Richard Hugo’s Collected Poems, and in that collected one book in particular, 31 Letters and 13 Dreams. I first read the Letters & Dreams in high school, and there’s no poetry like the poetry one reads in high school on the recommendation of a teacher who is very wise and generous and writerly. I love these poems. They are all written to other writers, and they all have the same title format: Letter to Kizer from Seattle, for example. They have a lovely way of combining the physical (place, weather, things) with the emotional (friendship, depression, joy). Here’s a sample, towards the end of this person’s blog post. I especially love the letters, and reading them at that age must have had a big impact, b/c some of the my favorite poems that I’ve written myself are letters. And even if they don’t turn out good, I always enjoy writing a letter poem. They’re just a lot of fun–you get to talk about yourself while talking to another person, which naturally brings place into b/c if you’re writing obviously you’re in separate places so you need to describe where you are. Also, you can say things that are a little bit deeper than you might normally say in a catch up letter, which is normally what I want to say anyway.

Over my peanut butter lunch just now, I got to thinking, hey, I just drove across the country and I need to catch up w/ some peeps, so why don’t I write some letter poems? I’ve been wanting to blog more about the trip, but haven’t thought of good ways to frame/start posts, and I’ve been wanting to reflect more on the trip and how it’s felt different than other big trips I’ve made. I’ve also been wanting to write people some long emails. So watch for some letter poems here. I’m going to start with ones addressed to people who are known readers of this blog. And oh yeah, I’m going to write them “from” some of the places we stopped along the way here, even though I am no longer there. That’s my poetic license, see. I’m going to write them here (or mostly here) in the blog, very little revision, so I’m not promising anyone great poetry. Just fun poetry, I hope. B/c what’s more fun than a letter written to you?? If you read this blog and you are my friend and you know that I don’t know that you read it, drop me an email so that I’ll write to you. And they won’t be in any particular order, just as I think of them. And we’ll see how long this project lasts!

Unpacking poetry

Unpacked, in no particular order except for what fit on what shelf. That big gap on the second shelf is supposed to be for my notebooks, once I unpack those. (If you saw how I arrange the books in my house, you’d have no idea I was a librarian.) Sorry for the delay–I didn’t want to post again until I could do a clear moving follow-up, and of course that meant a bookend picture. And I couldn’t take that picture until I’d actually unpacked the poetry box, which between a weekend full of tractor parades and fireworks, some homework, and keeping my appointment w/ the writing desk, just didn’t get done until yesterday.

Iowa so far is all that I hoped it would be–friendly, practical, sparsely populated, and full of local food, at least in my decently progressive college town. I can see cornfields from my rented house in two directions (they don’t smell this time of year, but I’m sure they will next spring). I bike to work and haven’t turned on my window A/C yet (although that’s probably b/c I am a cheapskate, it’s gotten pretty toasty inside a couple of times). This morning I ran in a local 5k sponsored by the community foundation and afterward treated myself to what’s billed as “The Perfect Cappuccino” at the local coffee house, which was also featuring a couple of my colleagues & their musical groups who were playing to raise money for people affected by the floods. (To anyone who might worry about me–it doesn’t flood here, and yes, I do have a basement.) I’m sure the contradictions and conflicts will become apparent soon enough, but for now, it’s feeling pretty good to be back in a small Midwestern town. As I was driving back from the 5k, through some leafy residential streets, I realized how relaxed I was and I thought, oh s***, I might really be just a Midwesterner at heart. I might never leave the Midwest again. I’m not dwelling on that thought, though–there’s really  no telling where the next round of job hunting will take me. This is a one year sabbatical replacement, and while I’m hoping it will put me in good stead to get something permanent in a similar locale, there’s no guarantees. Plus, I haven’t ruled out another urban stint.

More images to come (we got a spiffy new camera as an anniversary gift to ourselves), but this last one is meant to demonstrate another benefit of unpacking one’s poetry: more fun for cats!