My high school senior English teacher, Eric MacKnight (whom my friends and I called, surreptitiously, “Skippy” due to his preppy, khakis & oxford-cloth-button-down wardrobe), had a number of sayings from various literary sources around his room. One that always kind of bugged me–because I didn’t understand it–was one from Whitman: “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Maybe it was because I was only 17, and wasn’t really that large yet, but I didn’t really get what old W.W. was after, although I’m sure I contained multitudes–what teenager doesn’t?
But I was thinking about that quote as I drove the 200 miles from Medford, where my dad lived, back to my house last Saturday night. I was thinking about all the different ways I felt about my dad’s recent death–the day prior, though it seemed like weeks had passed. On the one hand, I was still shocked. A phone call at 3 am from the hospital is likely to do that to anybody, but when the call is to give you the news that your father has died, it’s a significant increase of magnitude. But I was also feeling relief. He’d suffered from COPD for years, depending on an ever-increasing amount of oxygen (4 liters/minute at the end), and it was hard to watch him have to catch his breath just from the efforts involved in, say, eating. He didn’t complain–at least not vociferously, not to me–but he was growing increasingly weak. I tell myself that he’s at peace now, and no longer has to struggle just to breathe anymore. So that helps me feel relief at his passing.
But I also feel relief from a much more selfish perspective. Dad and his wife, Sally, were planning to move from Medford to the Sacramento area, and I didn’t really think that it was a great idea. They would be closer to Sally’s daughter, and to me, which would have been wonderful. But they were looking to move into an independent living situation, and I didn’t think his health would hold up–I couldn’t imagine him getting to and from the dining hall twice a day for meals. I was sure that there would be increasing needs for more care, and the difficult questions and decisions that such eventualities would necessitate. I didn’t look forward to that, and frankly felt relief that I wouldn’t have to face those choices. I’m not proud of feeling that way, but there it is, anyway.
Shock, relief, guilt … oh yes, the guilt. I’d spent the prior weekend with my dad, while Sally was in the hospital having hip replacement surgery, cooking for him, chatting, running errands. All good, right? But at the same time, I was a little resentful that I was missing riding the Downieville Downhill as part of the California Muni Weekend 2009. When I saw how much he needed help, though, with everything, I knew I was in the right place; but it didn’t mean that I wasn’t still wishing I could be in NorCal riding that infamous trail.
I was feeling pretty resentful, too, as I drove to back to Medford on Thursday, just four days after my prior trip. Dad had been hospitalized two days after I’d left, and I went back as soon as my teaching duties for the week were done. I arrived around 5 pm, and stayed at the hospital with dad until sometime after 8. He seemed just like he’d been during the previous weekend–breathing seemed no more labored, his appetite was good, he was alert and sharp and his usual self. So when I said good night to him, I called my sister in Maine and told her he didn’t seem too bad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was discharged in a day or two.
But instead he died about 5 hours later.
My call to my sister the next morning, 4 am my time, 7 am her time, included this exchange:
Me: Hey, it’s me. I have some bad news–dad passed away about two hours ago.
Laura: What? Are you fucking kidding me?
Me: No. I just got back from the hospital.
Laura: What did he die from?
Me: Uh, lack of heartbeat? How would I know? He was 86. He couldn’t breathe.
So I guess one of those multitudes to go along with guilt, shock, and relief is “inappropriately jokey,” to say nothing of lacking prescience. I didn’t see it coming.
Which brings me to a something that makes me reconsider that last statement. I’d tossed a bunch of CDs in the car because I lose NPR pretty quickly on the road between Chico and Medford. I had a mix of music that began as an 80s indy/folk fest, but as I hit the pass at the shoulders of Mount Shasta, I slid Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky into the stereo. I hadn’t listened much to him in recent years, though he was my poet/troubadour of choice during high school. As I made my way toward my dad’s hospital room, “For a Dancer” came on, and I was again struck by the poignant lyricism of his songwriting:
Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don’t remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you’d always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you’re nowhere to be found
I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening
And I can’t help feeling stupid standing ’round
Crying as they ease you down
‘Cause I know that you’d rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
(Right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(There’s nothing you can do about it anyway)
Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone
Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you’ll never know
I found this clip of Jackson and David Lindley performing “For a Dancer” at the 2006 Philadelphia Folk Festival, and found it comforting. The whole sadness of that song, and its somber but thoughtful, lyrical but hopeful tone was exactly what I needed to hear and think about before seeing my dad. And I guess it’ll keep me from letting the uncertainty turn me around, and I’ll instead throw some seeds of my own as I think about my dad’s last days.
I guess I am large. And I contain multitudes. That Whitman fellow was onto something.
A colleague just posted on the NCWP ning that she’s reading Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. I read all of Stegner one summer about 20 years ago now, I suppose. My father moved from NYC to Salt Lake City at the age of about 6 (his dad was a Wall Street bigwig at the time of the 1929 crash, and moved to Utah to manage a copper mine after that). So I was interested in understanding more about Utah and SLC from a literary perspective, as well as one similar to my dad’s (another non-Mormon growing up in SLC in the 20s-30s). Anyway, loved everything he wrote, and will also have to revisit those books sometime soon.
I just got back from a week with the in-laws in Oregon, so spent most of the time with my nose in some books. The first was Shakespeare’s Secret by Elise Broach (and I really only bought it because the picture on the cover is awesome–how shallow am I?), a children’s novel about a girl named Hero (named after the character in Much Ado). Quick and fun. Lots of painless-but-interesting info about Shakespeare built in (esp. about the controversies over authorship) as part of the plot. I’m thinking it would be a way better way to introduce Shakespeare than the typical boring lectures … Maybe it would pair well with Gary Blackwood’s books (although his are set in the time of Shakespeare, and so provide a different kind of history. Together, they’d give a good sense of Shakespeare’s time and his literary legacy.
Then I read Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, a book about behavioral economics. It’s pretty awesome, for a book about a subject that generally baffles me (economics, that is; as a teacher and parent, I’m well-versed in irrational behaviors). It does things like as us to investigate why we’ll drive across town to save $5 off a $15 purchase, but won’t do the same to save $5 off a $250 purchase. It’s the same time investment, and the same net savings, but we only look at these two transactions from a relational perspective.
When I finished that, I didn’t dig out Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys (although I’d brought it along), because it’s something of a sequel to American Gods and it’s been probably 5 years since I read that and I wanted to read a synopsis to catch me up again before beginning it (and yes: that sentence did, in fact, get away from me). So instead, I checked what I had on my iPod Touch, and found Thackeray’s Vanity Fair ready to go via a neat little e-book reader called Stanza. I’d tried to read that a couple of times, but hadn’t made it past the first few chapters. But this time I just dove in, and am currently, according to Stanza, 25.73% into the book. I have no idea how that translates into pages, but it’s enough that I’m hooked and will now finish it.
And then I’ll be on to Gaiman. I also have his second volume of Absolute Sandman to read, so maybe I’ll do that concurrently.
So I’m currently just sitting here, waiting for a backup of the norcalwp.org WordPress MU to finish downloading, so that I can scrap it all and upgrade to 2.7.1, and then–perhaps–try out the BuddyPress plugin suite, turning the site from a simple blog host to a social network a la Ning but without the (intentional) lack of control provided by Ning. I’m thinking that might be a cool thing to have around when the Summer Institute starts up in a little more than a month.
As I’m waiting, I’m pondering a few different things. It’s dumping rain outside (an oddity in May in Chico), and I’m wondering how my friend Alicia’s first century bike ride went yesterday. We had a break in the storm for most of the day here, but I’m not sure if the same was true in Redding, where the ride happened. I’m marveling that she can pedal for a hundred miles. I’ve been spending more time on the road with my new 36″-wheeled unicycle, but I think around 14 miles is the longest I’ve gone on it so far. That hardly compares to a 100 mile endeavor. My riding buddy, Gary, and I are mapping out some endurance rides in the Team Bigfoot series–mostly 8- and 12-hour races over the summer and into the fall. I’d like to see some improvement in my performance at these kinds of events. I seem to always lose it at around the 5-hour mark; I want to get some better results. Maybe if I continue to lose weight–I’m down below the 200 lb mark (from around 225), and would like to hit 185 ideally–I’ll see some improvement. I need to keep hill riding, too, just to get my legs into better shape.
On the professional front, I received notice on Friday that, as of next school year, I’ll be promoted to Professor. For those not attuned to the ranks of academe, those hired in tenure-track jobs at colleges begin as Assistant Professors (and spend, usually, 6 years at that rank), then are reviewed for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. After a period as Associate (generally another 5 or 6 years, depending on the institution), another review occurs, and promotion to Professor ensues (if one is successful). Particularly strong candidates–those who publish a ton, or who secure lots of big grants–get on a fast track. That wasn’t me. I was 6 years to tenure, and another 5 now to reaching full prof status. It’s a little odd to feel like, in a way, I’m done with all the little games that have to be played to help find success and surety in the academic world. It’s not that I feel like I no longer have to work hard–far from it, in fact–but I do feel that, to a greater degree, I can make decisions about where to direct my efforts without trying to simultaneously predict how those efforts will be interpreted by others at my university. That’s a pretty nice feeling. And it’s also not like I had to make strenuous efforts to make my colleagues see and/or value the work I’ve been doing, either. It’s cheesy, yes, but it feels a little like a Sally Field moment (”You like me! You really like me!” ). And when you’re an educator, you take as many of those moments as you can find.
And speaking of educators … and the Summer Institute (okay, that was a couple paragraphs ago, but hey, you’re paying attention, and that’s a good thing, right?) … the NCWP held the orientation for the 2009 Summer Institute this past Saturday. Taking a cue from the awesome advice given by Tracy Baisden of the MUWP, and Bruce Penniman of the WMWP, my colleague Amanda and I structured the day as a kind of Summer-Institute-in-a-nutshell, so that the new participants could get a sense of what they’ll be in for when the summer rolls around. I thought it was a great day, but that’s the kind of thing that happens when you get interesting, committed teachers together. Thank Jim Gray for figuring that out 35 years ago.
Okay, so the download of my backup is all done, so I can proceed to mess with stuff. It may be that I’ll lose this entire post when I do the upgrade dance, but that’s all right. Worse things could happen.
Today began with a 3 mile run with Tyler. Now, I’m not much of a runner on the best of days, so deciding to go out running with a 14-year-old who has been training every day is probably not the best decision. I survived, anyway, although my hips are both a little sore now. It’s an odd place to ache, too. I’m not dealing as well with getting back into running as I did a few years ago when I trained to run a marathon. Or so I think. I’m unwilling to go look at my training blog from those days to see.
After lunch, the whole crew drove to Oroville to help Lisa get her class ready for tomorrow’s first day of the school year. I felt bad because Lisa seemed a little overwhelmed and had a hard time prioritizing the to-do lists, and we weren’t really able to help until she gave us directions. But we eventually got things put on the walls, or put away, or otherwise managed, so I think we didn’t waste her time.
When we got home, I fixed the flat tire on my bike and did a couple small modifications to the brakes on two of my munis. I’ll be ready to bike commute this week. I think I’ll accompany Tyler on his bike commute tomorrow, as we’ve been giving him rides to school the last two weeks, and I don’t want to throw him to the wolves, as it were. There can be some scary drivers out there at half seven in the morning in Chico.
Chico State starts classes tomorrow, but I don’t teach until Tuesday. I’ll be meeting with Suzanne about some NCWP business tomorrow, and (I hope, anyway) will also get things settled for the first day of teaching, too. I haven’t had any “naked dreams” yet, and have actually felt pretty calm about the start of the school year. I hope that the calmness carries through the week, but I’m a little doubtful.
I still have some things I’d like to do. Such as … doing a quick little video that shows how to find my office (most students don’t know the Research Foundation building exists, much less how to find it!), and getting a couple of extra copies of the course texts that I can give away on the first day just for fun. I’ll get done what get’s done, I suppose.
So I’m not sure I can reproduce cat grammar all that well, but I do love the funny (and sometimes quietly disconcerting) pictures on the Lolcats website.
Todd Finley, over at the English Education Prof blog, has once again pointed me to something provocative. This time, it’s another video by Michael Wesch, the cultural anthro prof who made the very cool “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video about Web 2.0. In this video, students contribute information about their practices as students, and it’s both enlightening and disturbing.
It was finally a pretty day in Chico; sunshine, upper 90s, and an air quality rating in double digits (50 or lower is “good”; we were at around 90 today, a big drop from the mid- to upper 100s last week). Last night, when I was cooling off in the pool around 10 pm, I could see constellations in the sky; the previous night, I could see 3 stars; the night before, only the smoky orange moon.
I spent a few hours on the article Rochelle and I are writing, and it’s almost a complete first draft. I’m guessing another couple hours will finish it. I think Rochelle and I are going to have to do a little Skype tomorrow (she’s in Chile, poor thing …) to get it all sorted. I want to send a draft of some type off to the editors before I head to Oregon on Wednesday.
We’ll be picking the children up in Oregon, too; they’ve been staying at Lisa’s parents’ lake cabin,four-wheelering, jetskiing, pedal-boating, lake swimming, inner-tubing, and other gerunds that are far more interesting than what I’ve been doing. It will be good to see the boys again, but it has been very peaceful here lately, too.
The Summer Institute has been going well. Friday, though, was a tough day. We had a great presentation first thing in the morning, and then read a cool article on reflective teaching (article by Patti Stock, discussion led by Rochelle Ramay), and then did a “working lunch” afternoon with writing groups and multimodal projects. All of this was fine. But there was so much smoke in the air from the hundreds of fires in the north state region that everyone felt somewhat out of sorts. I think the news said that our air quality was around 280 ppm, when 35 ppm is the upper limit for acceptable particulate matter in the air. Even with air conditioned air in the building, it smelled smoky and was overall just nasty. The air is a sickly orange, and doesn’t look natural outside. It’s a little clearer out today, but nothing like blue sky.
Weather forecast calls for a little more breeze, which may help us to clear out some smoke, but there may be more lightning strikes (which is what caused all the fires here in the first place!). I’m crossing my fingers.
Cool!RT @jtbartels: Like cycling? Maybe you'll be as excited about this as I am. Google to the rescue! Check it out: http://bit.ly/2m1jYg3 hrs ago
@lalpert "Foucault panel" sounds like something from LOST: "Hey, the Foucault Panel's showing an incursion on the east perimeter!" in reply to lalpert4 hrs ago
). And when you’re an educator, you take as many of those moments as you can find.
