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My Curiosity Jar

I like to collect weird little things from the outdoors. I picked this quirk up from my mother who (if I remember the story correctly) kept mice in a shoe box under her bed when she was a kid. Where my my mother and I differ, is that I don’t collect live things. However, since the age of about seven I’ve collected up rocks, feathers, shells, leaves, husks of seeds, etc. and kept them in various jars & boxes. This habit happens to drive my husband bat sh*t crazy. He doesn’t like much of anything about nature. He will tolerate it for the sake of a game of golf or perhaps a barbeque but otherwise, he’d rather stay inside the safety of our home reclining in front of the television. In the spring and summer I like to sit out on our back porch to work, blog or read and when he comes out to say hello, he squints against the sun in pain and the scurries inside like some sort of overgrown mole. It’s charming really.

Anyway. He finds it odd that I collect these little treasures from the outdoors and  tonight when he came upstairs to check on me*, he looked over and said “Are you building a curiosity jar?” The tone of this question was a mix of amusement and disdain as he peered at an apothecary jar that happens to be sitting on the far right corner of my desk.  My response to his query was a withering look and then I returned to the project I was working on before he busted in.

My curiosity jar

I must admit that I didn’t purposely “build a curiosity jar” but I like the idea of it (I don’t think this was my husband’s goal) and I will continue to add to it. I simply wanted a way to display some of the cool stuff I had found outside this fall, so I thought jar would be perfect. I also read recently that my favorite poet of all time, Elizabeth Bishop, also collected little pieces of interest from the outdoors. This furthers my theory that we would have been great friends if we would have lived during the same time period. Great minds…

 *When I say “check on me,” I mean he comes upstairs to procrastinate from writing his law school paper.

 A nut shell, a ginkgo leaf, a clam shell & a few crow feathers.

Where Have I Been? Well…

On November 5, 2011 I was here:

Absolutely gorgeous day.

I was doing this:

That’s me and my new husband.

This is not an excuse for my long, shameful absence from the blogging world but I knew I was in trouble when my mother, who was arguably more excited about my pending nuptials than I was, said to me not more than 24 hours after the wedding “When are you going to update your blog? Every damn time I look at it I see Midnight in Paris!”

Point taken & stay tuned.

Summer Schedule

The summer semester began this Monday. I was on campus Monday for most of the day; however, Monday will be the only day I’ll be on campus for the entire 8 week term. Am I teaching this summer? Yes. Am I teaching a full load (4 classes)? Yes. So how did I manage this schedule? Online classes.

I received my online certification two summers ago and from that point on, I’ve been teaching at least two online courses a semester. Online education, its pros and cons, could be an entire post on its own and I’m sure I’ll write that post later this summer. However, from a teaching point of view, I’d like to outline the basic reasons for why I chose this track for the summer semester.

Normally, I don’t like going totally online. This past spring I taught two face to face courses and two online courses and I felt like this was a good balance. However, summer term is a whole other ball game. For starters, it is only 8 weeks long. When I started as an adjunct at the same campus, summer term used to be 10 weeks long. I don’t like the 8 week term for a lot of reasons but most of my issues come from the way my institution has decided to organize this 8 week term. Most classes are in 3 hour blocks and meet twice a week. For example, last summer I taught two comp classes face to face and one met on M/W 8-11 and one met T/TH 8-11. This might not be such a problem if students were only taking one class but many times they are taking two or three or even four. This makes for a scheduling nightmare and it is exhausting. After teaching a 3 hour class, the last thing you want to do is turn around and teach another one and that is what many instructors are forced to do.

Also, it is not a particularly effective way to learn. Students feel pressured and if they get behind for some reason, there is virtually no room for them to move. The grading is completely insane, especially if students are writing papers all semester. It’s basically a marathon and it is dreaded by most faculty in my division.

Now, online classes are not easier by any means. They are not easier to teach or grade or set up and they are not easier to take (from the students perspective). However, you can work at home, which eliminates the dreaded three hour blocks. Also, I feel already, and we’re only three days in, that my feedback is much better because I’m not overtired from teaching six hours of class. I also feel like I use my time better. This morning I got up, ate breakfast, went to the gym and then came home and worked on my classes for about three and half hours. This is normal no matter if you’re teaching face to face or online but because I was home alone (well, Kwe and Nimbus were here but sleeping) and had minimum distraction, I was able to move through my work relatively quickly and thoughtfully.

Would I teach an entire load online for Fall or Spring semesters? Probably not. A 16 week term doesn’t give me nearly the headache and again, I like the face to face contact with students. However, I think that the flexibility of online classes also works well for our students during the summer. Students in all my online classes have to post an introduction on the discussion board and I’ve lost count of how many work 2nd shift, have children or grand children at home, have two jobs, don’t live in town, etc. This option allows them to complete a class without actually having to come to campus.
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Our CSA started this week. Aren’t they just beautiful? Kale, kholrabi, turnips & bok choy. We also got salad mix and pea shoots. I love summer.

Back to the garden…

It seems to be a tradition at the end of the spring semester (since we’ve moved into our house) for me to celebrate by going to work out my garden. This year I got a head start when RJ finally agreed to help me spread mulch throughout our flower beds. I also put in a few solid days of weeding before grades were due this week, but I think that was more like therapy. Sometimes after you’ve read several sub par papers, you just want to yank something out of the ground…

At any rate, the semester is over. I am glad. Graduation has come and gone and after one final meeting this afternoon, I will officially be on break for about two weeks before beginning my summer teaching schedule (more on that in a later post).

Yesterday I woke up feeling ambitious and spent the better part of four hours outdoors accomplishing the following tasks: 1) planting sunflower and zinnia seeds in a very large bed in our backyard. I planted a lot of seeds this year including sweet peas, lavender, bachelors buttons, and nasturtiums. If even half of the sunflowers grow, that back area is going to look awesome. Here’s hoping. It’s not a complete gamble. I planted just a few back there last summer as a test and they did pretty well.

2) Bringing up our patio furniture and assembling it. While this may not sound like a particularly arduous task, there are few things you have to take into consideration. It was 86 degrees yesterday by 11:oo am. The table, umbrella and chairs were down in the basement, so I had to lug them up the narrow, slick, muddy steps. The table was in pieces and we all know how good I am with spatial relations, so the fact that it only took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to put the legs on is a major accomplishment. But perhaps the biggest obstacle came when I discovered that Nimbus, our cat, had used the umbrella as a litter box. To say it was gross, well, that doesn’t even begin to describe it. At any rate, I had to disassemble the umbrella, wash it, and then put it back together. Good times.

And finally, 3) Sweeping off our back porch. Again, this doesn’t sound particularly complicated, but when you have a gigantic tree (I think it’s an oak) shedding seed pods (we used to call them helicopters when we were kids) at an alarming rate, well, let’s just say I don’t know why I bothered to sweep.

The reward? That came in two parts but both were equally gratifying. The first part came when RJ arrived home from work (yes, he started his new job this week. Hooray!) and said, “Wow.” The second part came when I came out this morning to sit on my back porch, with my tea and type this blog post. The pictures above are some of the flowers to bloom this year.

How to Tell You’re in The Middle of Nowhere in the Midwest

Let me preface this post by saying that I don’t have a problem with “the middle of nowhere.” In fact, I’m pretty much from the middle of nowhere and spent many of formative years frolicking through woods and streams unencumbered by neighbors or pesky traffic. That being said, “the middle of nowhere,” otherwise known as the “back woods,” or “east cambum f*ck” (it’s a family thing, so I’m not sure about spelling) largely defines itself by what part of the country it is located in.

I am very familiar with the New England version of the middle of nowhere, which is comprised of small houses/trailers on ridiculously large plots of land that may or may not have about 150 odd lawn ornaments decorating the front yard. These lawn ornaments range from sheep to flamingos to watering cans to (my personal favorite) the ever classy “bent over woman/man.” See picture below:
The other main defining trait of New England’s back woods is the presence of “tag sales.” What is a tag sale? Just another name for yard sale but it seems like in New England everyday is a good day for a tag sale. Of course, it is hard to decipher what is or is not for sale among all the lawn ornaments…

I’m also familiar with middle of the nowhere Texas which is marked by wide expanses of sky and concrete. The only thing that breaks up the monotony are the occasional cattle ranch or rest stop complete with steer horns. See below:

I’ve also experienced the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida. They all have their natural charms, but it seems to me that the Midwest (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana) has it’s own brand of “special.” What caused this meditation on rural America? Well, I’m in the middle of nowhere Indiana as we speak and today while driving, I started making a mental list:

1. Lots and lots and lots of churches. Methodist and Baptist mostly but when I say there was one about every 10 miles, I’m not exaggerating.

2. IGA. For those of you not familiar with the acronym, IGA stands for International Grocers Alliance and they are all but gone from the American landscape. In fact, the only other place I’ve ever seen one is in the tiny town my grandparents live in in New Hampshire.

3. Palm Readers next to law offices, dentists, tire places, etc. Yeah, I don’t know either.

4. Lots of billboards warning against a) the apocalypse b) having an abortion.

5. Random “artist studios” advertising pottery, metal sculpture or wood carving.

6. Beautiful cattle and horse farms.

7. Strip malls galore.

8. Quaint names for rivers like “Squash Blossom.”

9. Lots of chain restaurants.

10. Golf courses that pop up in the middle of places that don’t make sense. For example, you’re driving along and you pass a church, a billboard, a church, a pottery studio, a church, a horse farm, a church, and then…a golf course. Weird.

The Life and Times of an Unknown Poet…

I finished electronic submissions this past weekend and I just completed hard copy submission packets for everyone else who has yet to give into the ease of submission managers. I’ve completed 50 submissions total and I’ve already received three rejections (electronic submissions can make the rejection process a lot quicker), so I have or will soon have about 47 submissions out in the world.

I’ve encountered something during this round of submissions that I’ve never encountered before: anxiety about sending poems to people I know. The universities where I received my MA and my MFA also house two very well respected literary journals and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve been avoiding sending to them. Actually, as long as I’m being honest, I’ve avoided sending to any places where I know the editors are former peers or mentors. I know this makes no logical sense and it’s not like I fear rejection or criticism (I mean I went to school for poetry for crying out loud) but maybe I do fear it from people I know and respect. This may be oversimplifying it a little bit. I just seem to feel a slight twinge when writing certain addresses on submission envelopes…

I’m reading two different books right now. One is Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and the other is Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker. In a way, it isn’t really fair that I’m reading these two books at the same time. I love Elizabeth Bishop and I’ve read just about every conceivable thing by her or about her. This recent edition from the New Yorker is delightful and where most people would find reading pages of letters tedious, I really enjoy it. I’m never going to get meet Miss. Bishop but I can hear her voice in her letters and her conversation. It’s as close to a dialogue as I’m ever going to get, so I’ll take it.

On the other hand The Corrections is challenging and the verdict is still out whether I’m enjoying the challenge or not. I found the beginning of the book intriguing but odd, but as I move further into the novel I’m having trouble deciding if I’m still intrigued or just annoyed. I know I missed the boat on this book in terms of timeliness. Most of my friends jumped on Franzen’s bandwagon along time ago, but I’m going to finish it and then I’ll comment in full.

The days are lengthening and the sun seems to be making its presence known more and more often. I noticed the tips of some green shoots pushing through the leaf beds. Spring break is just around the corner and I look forward to spending some time working on my chapbook manuscript and working through some new poems that are bumping around in my head.

Last night I didn’t sleep well. This usually happens when I have a lot going on and can’t keep my mind still. When I did finally slip off into sleep, I had dreams of poetry and lines and words. Spring brings rejuvenation in many forms.