Quiet times

I'm enjoying the last moments of a week of calm before heading into four weeks of classes on Monday. I said in an earlier blog that the summer session was five weeks, which was scary enough-- but I found out a couple of days ago--when I sat down to create my syllabus against the school calendar—that it’s actually only four weeks. Ack!

So, no stress here. I’m just charged with putting on a writing class for 22 students, and doing it in 4 weeks. That's all.

Plus I’ll be taking my own “Hawthorne and Melville” class. The professor teaching it is my advisor, and she has an eminently sensible homework policy. Specifically, she’s one of those who believes that you can’t really do long papers in a short period of time. So, I’m hoping the workload won’t be horrible, although I’m pretty sure the reading load will be quite intense. No Moby Dick, thank goodness, but Melville’s short novels and Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables are on the list, along with a bunch of short stories. In four weeks!

Enough whining. So, about the jar at the top. It’s my ticket stub jar—an ordinary Mason jar into which I put all of the ticket stubs from films I’ve gone to. I’ve kept it up for several years—lots of fun.

Last night we went and saw The Da Vinci Code. Not an award contender, but a fun actiony sort of flick. Good summertime amusement. And Tom Hank’s hair wasn’t that bad at all. I can see why the Catholic Church pitched such a fit about the film-- it includes a fairly sympathetic look at Pagan history and traditions. Anyone who watches the film will come to learn that the pentacle is not a symbol of Devil worship, which is a reason enough to like the movie.

The other thing of interest that’s happened this week had to do with Ernie. We’d had spaghetti for dinner one night, and when Bill went to give Ernie his bedtime Rimadyl, he called me into the kitchen, saying, “He’s got a piece of spaghetti stuck on his chin—could you get it off?” (Note that Bill, the fearsome woodsman and hunter, was afraid to try and take the piece of spaghetti off the 13-lb ancient poodle’s chin. But never mind that.)

So, I bent down and took his muzzle and went to pull it off, but it was really hard and odd. And I realized it was his tooth. Ack!

Bill and I got all icky-nervous at that, but Ernie was acting like, “Whatever,” and didn’t seem to be in any pain, so we all went to bed.

The next morning, it was still there—the lower left canine, hanging at a crazy, sabertoothy angle. But by the time Bill left for work, it was gone. I later found the tooth in the living room. Ick.

Anyway, I took Ernie to the vet and they said that, yup, he’d broken the tooth. (Ya think?) Problem is, it wasn’t a clean break. There’s a bit of tooth and the whole root still in there. But the vet is reluctant to go in after it, given Ernie’s age. So, we’re watching him to see if anything more comes of it. So far, so good.

They think that when he tried to fly off the front porch (six or so weeks ago; see May 6 blog entry, "Dogs Who Fly--and the people who love them") and hit the concrete, he probably broke the tooth then, causing the root to die. Then at some point, whether he bumped the doorframe, bit a kibble, or whatever, it finally fractured through all the way and came out.

Anyway, that’s about as exciting as my life gets right now. Which is a good thing.

Brrrrr

Just in time for tomorrow's summer solstice, I stumbled upon the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Arctic web-cam.

Yup. Looks about like I thought it would.

A day in the garden

Today I finally had time for gardening! I'm trying to do some quick sprucing-up as I'm having friends over for the Solstice on Wednesday. In truth, there are a summer's worth of chores to do in the yard, but it felt good to get started even just a little.

The above picture shows my two raised bed planting boxes. The closer of the two is where I planned to put my veggies. The back one will (soon) hold a themed "tea garden," a project for a Grey School class. I'll be growing all kinds of herbs for use in culinary and medicinal teas.

Anyway, I spent almost three hours, and managed to get the first box all planted, including installation of drip irrigation and tomato cages. I planted 4 tomato plants, 2 basils, and a couple of trays of butter lettuce and mesclun. Plus marigolds to keep the little sluggies away. Here's what it looks like now.....

I was poking around in the weedy area next to the beds and found a gift from the garden. A couple of months ago, we planted peas in that space. They didn't come up,--we figured they'd rotted and just sort of forgot about them, especially after the weeds grew up. But today, I found that the peas had not only sprouted and grown, but were wound in and among the weeds, hidden and heavy with sweet peas. Guess what I'm having for dinner?

My muscles are sore tonight, and I might have burned my nose a bit. But it felt good to be out working in the dirt, under the sun.

In another piece of news too long in coming, the American Heart Association has FINALLY come out officially against "trans fats," a.k.a. partially hydrogenated oils. These non-foods aren't even recognized by our bodies, and are responsible for raising LDL (bad cholesterol) and cretaing a lot of heart disease. The AHA is recommending that trans fats comprise 1% or less of our daily diet. As I said, finally. This gives us yet another good reason to avoid fast food places which all--except, I think, for Burgerville--use trans fats for frying andf in their baked goods.

Grad School 'Year One' is a wrap!

Yes folks, it's true. Yesterday--Friday--I turned in my final piece of spring term course work: an 18-page research plan with annotations for my 'Problems in Literature Research' class. Earlier in the week, I submitted a 15-page teaching pedagogy, a 26-page critical reading journal, and 17 pages of polished-draft-level creative non-fiction. This was on top of grading 22 student writing portfolios, which come in 3-ring binders and are each about 1” thick.

Things got a little panicky, especially since my family had been visiting and I set all of this work aside for 3 days so that I could hang out with all of them. But, it’s done. It’s done! I can't believe that I am half-way through my graduate programs. The year has been fun, and challenging, and really hard....but it has gone by unimaginably fast.

I now have one week’s break before summer term begins. I am taking classes this summer—the GA position offers me free summer tuition, and I can’t help but take advantage of that. It’s an easy schedule, though. PSU sets up it’s summer classes as five-week “crash courses,” where you go to class 3-4 hours/day, 5 days/week for five weeks. So, I’m taking a “Hawthorne and Melville” class for five weeks, with a terrific teacher who’s also my lit advisor and will sit on my graduate committee. I’m also taking a 4-credit self study with my non-fiction professor, which amounts to receiving credit for time spent working on my non-fiction thesis (a book-length work). And, I’m spending one weekend at “Haystack,” PSU's annual arts/teaching event at Cannon Beach, Oregon (above). I'll be taking a landscape/geology class that supports my thesis.

My classes start on June 26 and run through July 20. On top of taking classes, I’m also teaching a class: WR 115, which is an Intro to the Intro to College Writing class that I’ve taught for the last two terms. This class is also set up as a five-week kamikaze version, and it starts at 8 am! Now, picture, if you will, a room full of young college students at 8 am. Think hard…. Got it? I’m imagining vacant looks and lots of drool, but we’ll see how it goes. Getting to teach over the summer is a great opportunity—there are only a few slots available. Originally I was supposed to work all summer in the Writing Center, which would have been fun, too. But someone who was supposed to teach was unable to, and I was offered the job.

So, I’m going to be really, really busy until July 20, and then will have a quiet, open summer before fall term insanity begins.

Re: the picture at the top. I didn’t have time to write about it before, but on June 7, I was in Eugene as one of the group of winners of the Oregon Quarterly “Northwest Perspectives” Essay Contest. Yes, I was in Duck Land. We took part in an afternoon workshop and an evening reading. It was really fun. Anyway, the image above is of the magazine cover, and if you follow the link earlier in this paragraph, you can download a copy of the story that includes the complete magazine layout and photos. I took two of the photos, which is pretty cool.

I'm off this afternoon to a fellow GA's graduation party today, then hope to spend time excavating my home office, which looks as though a few reams of paper and a stack of books blew up inside it. Maybe I'll take 'before' and 'after' pictures!

Family in town!

Lots going on. I’m headed into spring term Finals Week (note intentional use of capital letters) and my family is visiting! Katie arrived on Thursday, Mom on Friday, Erin & Scott & Rebecca on Saturday. I haven’t time to write much right now—more after Finals Week is over—but let’s try a photo story. At least that way you’ll know I’m alive.

So, Katie arrived. And with her—or any of the kids—always come the inevitable assortment of cousins, friends, school chums and the like. Here’s a photo of Katie and two of her Chi-O sorority sisters (l-r: Kat, Holly, and Katie) headed out for a night on the town:



Yesterday (Saturday), Bill, Mom, Katie, Holly, and I spent a day in the Columbia River Gorge.

Driving east, we stopped first at Sam Hill’s Stonehenge monument, a short distance east of the Maryhill Museum. This Stonehenge is an exact size replica of the one on England’s Salisbury plain.



Katie, Gammie, and Holly on a rock before Stonehenge, with the Columbia in the background.



The view from Stonehenge….



The Columbia River, framed by Stonehenge (photo by Holly)….



Our ultimate goal was the Temani-Pesh Wa trail, a trail literally “written in stone.” It is the home of several petroglyphs, rescued from Petroglyph Canyon before the area was flooded in 1957 by the impounded waters behind The Dalles Dam (the same flood that erased Celilo Falls).



Spedis (say SPEE-duss) owl, a very famous glyph:



And another cool one, the water devil:



We walked down the train tracks to get a view of ‘She Who Watches.’ Here are Katie, Mom, Bill, and Holly. ‘She Who Watches’ is a dark (reddish) glyph near the upper right corner of the picture, just to the left of a green bush.



A closer view….



And another….



It was a great trip…. Except for a little run-in with a ranger at the site, who wasn’t happy with the fact that we were technically trespassing when we looked at ‘She Who Watches.’ But I promise you all, we didn’t do anything we shouldn’t have. I would never, never, never harm a petroglyph or any other sacred object. Never.

This morning we all went to the Milwaukie Farmer’s Market. Note Erin and I, reflected in Bill’s glasses!



Wish me luck on those exams. We’ll chat later!

Not a Goth... who knew?

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You scored as Understanding Outsider. You are not a goth yourself, but you may know goths and you understand and appreciate, or at least respect, the gothic subculture. Understanding Outsider 54% Ethereal Goth 50% Anything-Goes Goth 38% Confused Outsider 38% Fantasy Goth 29% Romantic Goth 21% Death Rocker 13% Cyber-goth 0% Perky Goff 0% Industrial/Rivet-Head 0% Old-school Goth 0% What subcategory of Goth best fits you? created with QuizFarm.com

Memorial Day

These names are for the last year only. You know-- since the war has ended. To be continued next Sunday, in the Doonesbury strip.

Hubris

(Picture taken August 2005, on the south flank of Mt. Hood, up in the huckleberry fields. It has nothing to do with the blog entry-- I just thought it was pretty.)

It’s been a weird and wonderful few days.

Wednesday I was sailing along, feeling about as fine as a grad student can feel. It was the day of the annual English Department Kellogg awards, and all of us were invited to a pre-reception with keynote speaker Barry Lopez. This was especially wonderful because two of my WR 121 students from winter term had won awards, too, using essays written in our Basic Comp class. They came to the reception and I was able to introduce them around. Lopez shook hands with one of the students, Joel, invited him to pull up a chair, and then sat knee-to-knee with him for half an hour, discussing Joel’s experiences as a soldier in Iraq one year ago.

After the pre-reception came the presentation itself—at which I was lucky to receive a sizable fellowship for non-fiction writing. I say ‘lucky’ with genuine feeling, as compared to saying it to fish for compliments. The non-fiction program is small—with only maybe two dozen students—and full of extremely gifted writers, any one of which could easily have received any of the awards given that evening. It felt like a luck-of-the-draw thing: I truly believe that they could have simply put all of our names into a hat and drawn out the winners, and it would have been fine. I felt very fortunate to have been honored. The whole thing was made even sweeter because most of the students in the non-fiction program attended and we all hooted and cheered each other. It was a wonderful feeling of community, and solidarity. Writing can be a lonely, hard business—being buoyed up by friends makes it sweeter.

The ceremony was followed by a lavishly catered reception at the Simon Benson House on PSU campus, at which time Barry Lopez not only signed two of my books but complimented my writing and then hugged me. HUGGED ME. What a rush! It was a great time—a chance to visit with everyone without the usual pressures of angst and time-panic that rule one’s days as a grad student in the writing program. I sort of floated home at about 10 pm.

And then came Thursday, and I crashed back to Earth. My Thursday evening class is “Forms of Non-Fiction,” taught by Debra Gwartney, an incredible writer and mentor and a very challenging teacher. It was my night to be workshopped—meaning I’d brought a story the week before, and everyone had taken it home to read and critique it. Now here they all were, ready to spend 45 minutes workshopping it aloud, while I, as per the rules, had to stay silent. It’s always a grueling process, but it’s a good kind of pain. The idea for the story had come to me late and I’d written it faster than I should have. As a result, the essay—about aging, and death—was rough, and my fellow students found and shredded every loose end and each wobbly word. It was, as it always is, a humbling experience, but a good one. Now I know what I need to do with the essay.

Here’s the thing: this combination of euphoria and despair, pride and self-flagellation, is what a writer’s life is like. Writing is hard, exhausting work, and it demands a constant level of self-criticism that can leave one both tired and fragile. I got home that evening and was in bed at 10:00. The next morning, I saw Bill off to work and went back to bed until 8:00, then, after having a bite of cereal, fell asleep on the couch for another two hours. Very unlike me, and very telling about how tired I’ve been, and what a strain grad school is taking.

As for the hubris, what a great taste of being a diva one night, and a downtrodden, struggling writer the next! The Greeks would be happy with this. Barry Lopez understands it, too. At the Kellogg Awards presentation, he said, “I congratulate each of you who won an award tonight. Enjoy the spotlight. Treasure the moment. But tomorrow morning, get up out of bed, pick up your pen, and start the work again.”

Steven Colbert's Bush appearance

This just in from a friend's blog (thanks, Estara!):

"If you missed the link to Stephen Colbert's in-your-face skewering of both Bush and the press in their presence at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it is my pleasure to inform you that you can buy it at iTunes and have it to enjoy forever for two bucks.

Have a nice day."

Rock Star photo....

It’s been a busy week, with several high points.

Last week I found out that I’m receiving the “Giving Back Fellowship,” a new award given by the Dept. of English/Writing to a first year graduate writing student. It means enough of a cash prize that I can give up my Vanguard job next fall. This is a good thing: although I’ve enjoyed writing for the paper, it takes up a lot of time, and cuts into my writing and studying.

I also found out that two of my WR 121 students from winter term are getting awards at the Kellogg ceremony. Woo hoo! I am so, so proud of them!

I met with my advisor this week and found that I’m close to being done with my hard credit requirements for both MAs, which is a load off my mind, and means I can now concentrate on a few remaining classes and on preparing for graduation in a year.

I watched Capote, finally. WOW. An incredible film, and I fully support Phillip Seymore Hoffman's 'best actor' win. WOW.

Erin came for the weekend. We watched TV and hung out watched the Gilmore Girls finale and visited the gorge yesterday and had a lovely time. Here is the view from Crown Point:

Here's Erin (tiny pink person) on the top tier of Crown Point's Vista House:

Here we are below Multnomah Falls:

Erin, at the foot of Horsetail Falls:

The obligatory ice cream from Cascade Locks:

This morning, Erin, Bill, and I went to Farmer’s Market. After Erin and Amber headed home, Bill and I went to see the Artrain, a traveling Native American art show that is held within a set of train cars and is pulled from city to city. I'm not sure how Milwaukie pulled this off, because Artrain is a really big deal, and somehow we got it instead of Portland! In fact, it pulled up right behind the apartments where Katie once lived.

Here's Bill on the Artrain, which turns out to be a gallery inside temperature- and humidity-controlled train cars.

I'm strangely tired today, but it's been a good week.

Happy Mom’s Day!

Big shout outs to those people who qualify me as mother, daughter, niece, or granddaughter, starting with my Mom—seen here at the Chinese Garden….

My first-born, Katie (also seen in the top picture!)….

The middle kiddle, Scott (and Rebecca!)….

The babester, Gollum, er, Erin….

Guess it's only fair to include an... ahem... better picture of Erin...

The snarler, Ernie….

The one and only GG!

And my cousins and Auntie…. Even thought Auntie’s no longer here on Earth with us, she’s somewhere (!) and I think of her a lot. Below is a great picture taken in mid-1955. That’s Auntie Georgia, GG, and Mom standing in front of GG and Grandpa Fred’s home in The Dalles. The little girls are my cousins, Kris and Janni. And the baby? It’s me!

Happy Mother’s Day to all women, for all women are mothers, whether the decide to give birth or not.

Many blessings, and a bit of motherly magick to you all….

Some things are just never meant to be, no matter how much we wish they were....

The infrequency of my blog entries of late should tell you something about how busy I am. I had another of my near-panic days this past week, buried in schedules and homework and papers to grade and lack of sleep. It seems that “Week 6” just isn’t a good time for me.

But once again, the feeling has passed—thank Goddess. And today, a glorious day off. It’s supposed to be 85 today!

Big news: …. drum roll….

MY THESIS IS APPROVED!

Michael McGregor gave me the go-ahead on my proposal to write about the geology and folklore of the Cascade Range. Yes kids, mom finally got an official reason to play with science! I’ll be doing the research this summer and writing next fall and winter. Wahoo!

Spring term is whizzing by. I’m registered for summer classes (GAs get free tuition, which I can’t pass up), including a weekend at Haystack with Ellen Morris Bishop, writer of this book. The workshop’s focus is writing about landscape, and how it informs the stories we tell. It will give me a lot of information and help with my thesis.

My WR 121 class is going well—the students are both interested and interesting. I really do love teaching.

I received my GA assignments for next year. For the first term I’ll be the Assistant Director of Writing, a chance to work in an Admin position in the Dept. of English—a good resume item, for sure, and a chance to see how the department works from the inside-out. Winter term I’m scheduled to teach an intro to creative non-fiction writing class. That may change, though, as the class may not be offered that term. Spring term, I’ll be team teaching “Intro to Literature” with my friend and co-GA, Eric Wilson (above). We’re both thrilled with that assignment—Eric is the introspective theoretical philosopher type, while I bring lots of writing and modern culture and folklore into my classes, so with us together it ought to be pretty interesting.

The Grey School site is finally back—and mostly repaired—after almost two months of serious site/host problems.

Last but not least, Llewellyn—the flagship publisher for magickal/spiritual writing—is interested in a book proposal that I sent a couple of weeks ago. It looks as if I’ll be getting a pre-contract from them for a book that I’ll write next spring/summer. More details on that as they occur.

The Gargoyles book (left) is in process (and can be pre-ordered from Amazon!)—I need to do some work on lining up illustrations.

That’s the update, hope you liked it.

Now… on to Gilmore Girls!

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!

Don’t read further if you don’t want to know too much….

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(I warned you!)

1. Loved the music! Loved the music! Loved the music! Although I wish I knew who each of those groups were. Erin is coming next weekend, and I’ll make her tell me. Supposedly Dan Palladino plays one of them, in a farewell cameo. What a hoot, though. The idea of troubadours overrunning the town was terrific.

2. Loved the Clarence Thomas reference.

3. Rory’s finally growing up a little. Finally. I loved the elevator scene with Huntsberger. What great tension, to have them realize that they maybe do have something in common, in terms of what they want for Logan (see beefcake, left)

4. As for Lorelei, I almost couldn’t take her sad, puffy, increasingly depressed and desperate face through the show. It’s what starts the episode, and it’s what ends it. Great bookend-ing. But naked in Christopher’s bed? And did you see the self-satisfied smirk on Christopher’s face? AUGH! Here we go again, I think to myself.

5. Luke: WISE UP! Is your hat too tight or something? Big dummy!

6. Can I rant about these garments called “shrugs”? If there’s ever been a garment that exemplifies dumb fashion, this has got to be it. Half a sweater? Half a jacket? Not even half, really. More like a third. So, do they ask you to only pay one-third of the price when you buy one? I’m betting not.

Now that I’m writing this, I’m betting that some of you—including my own daughters—probably wear these things. If so, no pain intended. But come on—let’s think about this a little, okay? What if people also started wearing a third of a sock, a third of each shoe, or a third of their pants? (The fact that some people actually do dress like that, notwithstanding.)

7. Anyone notice that Christopher's daughter's name acronym--GG--is also the acronym for "Gilmore Girls"? Coincidence? Oh, I think not.

8. Team Sherman-Palladino has ridden off into the sunset…. I worry about what the show will be like next year, in what will probably be its last season. Time will tell….