And also I look like Bernie Sanders

Posted on April 3, 2016 | 9 comments

Even with my super-short, super-straight bangs, I was an adorable child:

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Kindergarten Cute

Whatever body-image issues I’ve developed since then, there’s no question in my mind I was cute then.  When I was a baby, one or two of my uncles (depends on who’s telling the story) said there should be a “Marnie Doll” because I was cuter than a Kewpie Doll.

When I was a baby, my parents and brother and I got one of the two good pictures of the four of us we’ve ever managed to get:

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There’s also a picture of us in the 80s that’s pretty good. But in general, the four of us don’t photograph well together.

Recently, my Great-Uncle Logan passed away, and my cousin Jewell is going through his photo albums to divide up the pictures. She’ll give the originals to my mother, but she scanned this one and sent it to me:

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This is generally how it goes when the four of us have our picture taken. The looking in different directions. The some of us all swanky and others not so much. In this one, the squinting. Still, I’m loving this picture. First, my mother looks remarkably like one of my younger cousins & I always find those resemblance moments compelling.

And also I look like Bernie Sanders. When I posted this on Facebook, a few people tried to tell me I was actually cute, but I said, no, no–I was a cute child, but this is not a cute picture of me.

Thus, my thoughts when I saw it were “I look like Bernie Sanders” and “Mom looks like Jamie” and also “Mom looks so cool!”

When my Mom saw the picture, she was trying to figure out what year it was.

When my brother saw the picture, he agreed that I looked like Bernie Sanders, but pointed out it was before Dad went to Vietnam–he knew because Dad didn’t have much of  a tan.

Dad agreed it was before Vietnam because he came back from that war with a higher rank and medals.

The Bernie Sanders pic made us all remember the following picture, the first one of all of us when Dad came back from Vietnam (Mom’s standing behind Dad–you can see her hair a little–again, challenging to get a good pic of all four of us).

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I don’t know if the four of us were ever happier than we were in that picture. In that moment.

After that, we would have two adolescences and career challenges and the ordinary life stresses of keeping it all together as adults and then weathering deaths in the family and now my father’s memory is so spotty that he’s confabulating–remembering things that didn’t happen. When he saw the Bernie Sanders pic, he talked about remembering seeing it before, but Mom and I are pretty sure we never saw it. That Uncle Logan snapped it, and it went in their photo albums, and we’re just now seeing it.

That’s the thing about confabulation–it’s hard to know if I should play along (at which point I almost feel like I’m gaslighting myself) or challenge Dad (which is troubling, since the confabulated memory seems as real to him as any other). And in this case, does it really matter? Probably not.

But if we skip to the end of the war and focus on the picture of Dad holding Brian and me, Mom right behind, that white car in the drive–we’re on Gran’mommy and Gran’daddy’s back porch, in their old house on the farm (before the new house, before they had to sell the farm).

If we focus on that picture, well, it’s just pure bliss. I’m sure of it.

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Posted in Family, Opdyke, Searching, Uncategorized

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Purgatory, Kentucky (5/7)

Posted on February 8, 2016 | 4 comments

I like to have a quiet place to pray,
and sitting, waiting, in my truck, well that’s
about as quiet as it ever gets
because the radio died in ’88.
When a radio dies where does its music go?
They say sound waves never really go away.
I don’t understand what all I know
about that. I guess I believe that sound’s a wave.
I guess I believe there are tiny bones in my ear,
a hammer and an anvil and a horseshoe? Is that right?
I wonder if they’ll be taking questions there.
I wonder if it’s always kind of twilight.
There’s the ferry now—I guess it’s time
I got myself in gear and got in line.

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Ferry on Highway 169 somewhere in Kentucky (a Creative Commons shot from Edlitmus on Flickr)

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Car Sonnets, Creativity, Poetry, Purgatory Kentucky, Uncategorized, Writing

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David Bowie, RIP

Posted on January 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

There’s so much to say.  I wasn’t ready for this death.  I hope I can say more at some point.  In the meantime, I’ll re-run a little poem I wrote when he released “Walking the Dead” a couple of years ago–a song and album for which I was so grateful. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d needed a new one from him.

_____

Bowie’s Voice

starched linen right when
it’s not so stiff

piece of paper twisting
in a breeze

sheet of metal
a thin sheet
its sound waves
emerging at the quiet snap
of bending this way
and then that

Bowie’s voice
in “Where Are We Now”
quavery
elegant
sad

exactly how we ought to speak
to the dead, were we to speak
to the dead, were we dead,
were we out walking the dead.

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What’s Waiting on the Other Side of Turmoil?

Posted on November 26, 2015 | 1 comment

–a Thanksgiving poem in a difficult time,
ending with a paraphrase of Julian of Norwich
which also contains a reference to Husker Du

 

What’s waiting on the other side of turmoil?
We can hope, but the ugly truth is we don’t know
if all will be well and every everything will be well.

We’re partial to our own peculiar ordeal.
Our depth of field’s so shallow it can’t show
what’s waiting on the other side of turmoil.

It’s hard to line up the practical with the theological.
Would Julian say, if she got her car stuck in the snow,
“all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well?”

I bet she sometimes just muttered “oh well.”
I bet she had her doubts a mothering God controlled
what’s waiting on the other side of turmoil,

the gruesome news, the shit at work, the hell
through which we make each other go and go and go.
If all will be well and every everything will be well,

the obvious question is when? Does anyone know?
Could one tiny seed of calm actually grow?
What’s waiting on the other side of turmoil?
When will all be well? Will every everything be well?

_____

It does seem to me the setting on turmoil is turned way up lately.  But this Thanksgiving I am trying to nurture little seeds of calm where I can.

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Vanessa Quivertail when she was a baby kitteh.

 

 

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Family, God Stuff, Searching, Uncategorized, UW System, UW-Richland, Writing

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Bread to the Wise

Posted on November 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

It’s the story of our times: turmoil and reorganization at my job. Survivor’s guilt. Wanting to get a t-shirt or a lapel pin that says, “I know how lucky I am to have a good job.”

But here’s how my brain works–I comfort myself with wisdom literature.

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible after Habakkuk and Mark. (Actually I don’t know what my favorite books of the Bible are–I typically hate lists like that. But those three would be in my top ten.)

So this verse occurred to me today: Ecclesiastes 9:11
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Sometimes the right person loses their job and the right person gets hired for the new structure.

But a lot of times, it’s the opposite.

So, continuing in the theme of wisdom literature, now that I’m in a system with more supervisors than ever who aren’t local, this occurred to me:

Hello, I must be going!

Hello, I must be going.

Hello, I must be going.

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The Everbearing Hump of Midterm

Posted on October 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

A carefully cultivated, fully composted first crop
of green beans–so much better than canned.

That one tunnel with the bend
where you always panic briefly and want to stop
when you can’t see either end.

A subterranean pimple, perfectly round,
on the cusp of emerging, not quite ready to pop.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the suspense,
the tension, the heat of it, the standoff.

A phoenix dragging and puking and down
and not yet gloriously finding its lift.

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IF I DIE IN MY CLASSROOM—a teacher’s ballad

Posted on October 17, 2015 | 6 comments

I hope that right before it happens
I do something heroic,
but knowing me and how I panic,
I more than probably won’t.

I hope I’m wearing something cute.
I wonder about my hair.
I hope I look good on the floor.
I hope I say more than “don’t shoot.”

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

If I have to die in class, I hope
I’ve just said something noble
that really made them think.
I hope I’m really quotable.

What else? I didn’t stay up late
to finish grading papers.
I made love to my husband instead—
I barely let him out of bed.

When I dropped my son off at school,
“I love you,” “I love you too”
is what we said. It’s what we say
so many times every day.

I hope my death makes people work
to figure out how to stop
the massacres. But if Sandy Hook
didn’t, my death won’t help.

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

the upset student isn’t mine,
the unhinged parent isn’t here,
the disgruntled coworker is fine
(since his new meds he’s better).

When I lock the door and pull it shut
I tell my students that’s it—
that’s all I can do to keep them safe.
I hope I remember to pray.

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

I have this badass dream.
I make myself a deputy.
I buy a gun. I take a class.
I shoot at cans.

I buy a fetching little holster.
I wear it when I teach.
I see the bad guy reach.
I blow him away. I’m faster.

You don’t have to know me well
to know how unlikely that is.
Much more likely I’d shoot myself.
Accidentally shoot someone else.

If I have to die in class,
I hope it isn’t soon.
I hope it’s me having a heart attack.
I hope it’s not a gun.

______

Two Wisconsin legislators started the week off with a bang by introducing a bill that would repeal the ability of University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical Colleges institutions to ban firearms on campus. They are Republican, obviously.

Other Republicans have supported them by saying a gun is a tool the same way a smartphone is a tool. Let’s talk about tools. (Cf my friend Chuck Rybak on tools.)

Three Democratic legislators have now proposed a bill that bans concealed carry on campuses.

I think it’s a cowboy fantasy that more guns make good people safer, but I get the fantasy. I find it really appealing. Two of my favorite shows ever have Timothy Olyphant shooting all kinds of bad guys. If I could teach next door to Seth Bullock? Or Raylan Givens? Hell yeah, let’s arm the teachers and the students.

This photo is by Prashant Gupta. It appeared in this story: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/timothy-olyphant-justified-time-article-1.1728226

This photo is by Prashant Gupta. (Click for story it appeared in.)

But you know what? None of my colleagues inspire me in that particular way. And my students? Well, actually–some of them are pretty bad-ass. If I knew for sure they’d be on my side….

Since I’m wondering who’ll protect me, should I arm myself? I looked up the requirements for concealed carry in Wisconsin. I’d need to take a firearms safety class. I’ve been thinking about it, actually–not because I want to own a handgun, but because I want to shoot one. I have a novel that has guns in it, so I’m curious.

But that’s research. In real life, I’m a dorky, middle-aged woman with poor hand-eye coordination. No one who knows me would feel safer if I were armed.

Oh–and then there’s the question of evidence. My friend Ryan Martin has a great blog, and he points out some facts—

  • more guns = more gun violence
  • more guns = more suicides

One of the pages he cites is fascinating to me. It has a long section on why the estimates of successful self-defense with guns are probably way over-reported, but also this:

“The study found that in incidents where a victim used a gun in self-defense, the likelihood of suffering an injury was 10.9 percent. Had the victim taken no action at all, the risk of injury was virtually identical: 11 percent.”

And this:
“What’s more, the study found that while the likelihood of injury after brandishing a firearm was reduced to 4.1 percent, the injury rate after those defensive gun uses was similar to using any other weapon (5.3 percent), and was still greater than if the person had run away or hid (2.4 percent) or called the police (2.2 percent).”

(I plan to look up that study to read it for myself–haven’t taken the time yet, but I will.)

So if I’m paying attention to that, I get a very strong urge to start practicing using my rolling backpack as a weapon (I did mention I’m a dorky middle-aged woman).  So even though the UWPD and the FBI recommend running or hiding and only fighting as a last resort, hm….

(I need to keep working to get in shape so I can actually run, btw.)

Let me be clear about one thing–I think it’s morally repugnant to blame victims of violence for not fighting back. (I’m not even going to link to people who say things like that. Shame on them.)

In any case–don’t ask me about guns on campus.  Ask law enforcement officials. UW Police are against it. And if police officers are too liberal for you, listen to this guy, quoted in an article from Wisconsin Public Radio:

“…Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said he didn’t see evidence of greater danger. ‘(Science) is really unanimous in showing that concealed carry doesn’t lead to any increase in gun crime,’ he said. ‘The debate is really over whether it reduces gun crime.'”

(Note:  I do want to research what he says about science & concealed carry.)

EVEN HE THINKS UW OFFICIALS SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION,

NOT LEGISLATORS:

“[Esenberg] also suggested that campus authorities, as opposed to the Legislature, might be better positioned to decide on concealed carry policies for universities. ‘I don’t think you have to pass a bill about everything,’ he said.”

“I don’t think you have to pass a bill about everything,” he said. That cracked me up.  An actual libertarian kind of scolding repubs for over-legislating.

None of this is funny. Too many people have died. Too many children have died. But this guy is funny, and I turn to humor, because nothing else apparently works. And it’s not so much that humor works, but that it makes me feel better. I think nothing works, thus the general lack of hope.

We can’t work together to figure it out. People I love and/or respect  (sometimes both! really!) disagree with me in part or in whole about what ought to be done.

What I’m sure we’ll keep doing is disagreeing. What I wonder if we’ll ever do is work together to figure it out.

In the meantime, I’ll wake myself up, like I did this morning, with a poem forming in my head about “if I die in my classroom.”

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Posted in Teaching, UW System, UW-Richland

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How You See It, How You Don’t

Posted on September 13, 2015 | Leave a comment
Amery Harrington playing a character who doesn't like what she sees in "490 Freaking Times"

Amery Harrington playing a character who doesn’t like what she sees in “490 Freaking Times”

It’s entirely possible that my drive to write in multiple genres is yet another marker that helps explain my diagnosis of Adult ADHD.

(Other markers include truly impressive procrastination skills and a sort of fundamental inability to shut cabinet drawers and doors.)

I can’t help it. Well, I don’t know if I can help it or not, actually. I don’t want to help it. I don’t try to help it. I just keep writing all kinds of everything.

I want to write and publish poetry, and I’ve done that this year. Here’s one I’m really pleased with, one of the more honest things I’ve written, explaining why I’m not (currently) involved with organized religion. The title sort of says it all, “Fuck the Life Abundant.”

I want to publish journalism–op-eds and academic subjects tailored for a general audience, and I do that every month in a column called “Pedagogy Stew” in the Voice of the River Valley.

I want to write and publish creative nonfiction, and I’ve done that this year. Front Range Review published a piece called “Chat Road,” not available online, sorry. I also have some pieces that will appear on Wisconsin Life sometime this winter.

I want to write and publish fiction–still waiting to hear from several places I’ve submitted fiction to this fall. But as I like to tell myself right when I’ve sent something off, “I’m currently un-rejected from a number of good publications.”

And I want to write plays that get produced. That one is taking me years and years to get to, but I keep at it, and two nice things have happened so far this year–one 10-minute play got a reading at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Spring Green Community Library. Three students and an awesome community theater actor read that.

Coming up this weekend is something even more fun. I was excited to be asked to write a piece this summer that could be used by Spring Green’s River Valley Players and Taliesin School of Architecture students.  The idea of the evening is a collaboration between the two groups, and the theme of the pieces that will be performed is “perspective.”

My play is a short one-act, five scenes–the same thing from multiple perspectives. It’s called “490 Freaking Times.” (Bonus points if you get the allusion right away.)

The play is set at a wonderful local bar called The Shed--the background is a picture of the Shed.

The play is set at a wonderful local bar called The Shed–the background is a picture of the Shed.

Here’s a funny story. Terry Kerr is directing the play and working with everyone to stage stories from the Taliesin students. Her original idea for the play was to do something like a book called Elements of a Scene, in which the same thing happens multiple times from multiple perspectives. The title got twisted in communication somehow to where I thought I was being asked to adapt Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the stage. And I still said yes!

It’s true. I am often up for anything. (Another marker for ADHD?)

So if you’re local, and available, please come on out! Friday 9/18 at the Gard in Spring Green, Saturday 9/19 at Hillside Theater at Taliesin. 7:30 both nights, tickets available at the door, goodwill offering.

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Congratulations on the First Day of Class

Posted on August 31, 2015 | 2 comments

Congrats for showing up today. I’m serious.
I’m really glad you’re here. We’ve got a lot to do–
class roster, introductions, syllabus–
I’m not sure how all this business comes across to you,
so I wanted to take a minute to let you know
I know for some of you it took a hell of a lot
to sit at that desk. You’re far away from home.
You fought and survived a war. A sexual assault.
Your mind is a genius of self-sabotage.
Your body somehow fights you every step.
You know how hard it was, so you be the judge
of just how much applause you ought to get.

Of course this is just the very first achievement
we’re aiming for. Good work on that assignment,
good midterm grades, a full semester wrapped
up neatly like a present for whatever holiday you happen
to celebrate at the end of December. Before all that,
let’s just enjoy a good beginning. Congrats.

Toot your own horn!

Toot your own horn!

_____
I’m posting this in the spirit of a post I liked a lot recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education called “10 Things This Instructor Loves.” It was a response to a blog post about professors’ pet peeves (and there are numerous versions of that list floating around).

People post things on my wall sometimes that have snarky comments from professors, and I usually admit that I’ve thought things like that sometimes. But I try not to say them to students. I even try not to be passive aggressive in my verbal and written comments to students–this after a good friend cracked up laughing when I said I sometimes wrote “spell check should have caught that” in student papers. He called it for what it was, a passive aggressive comment (I hadn’t even realized that).

I do try to be direct and honest. I did tell a student once she was as baffling to me as if a giant mushroom had sprouted outside the classroom while we were inside. She was coming to class and being disruptive, but not turning in enough to come anywhere close to passing. It turned out that she had A LOT going on in her life that I had no clue about, and she kept coming to class because she didn’t want her friends to know she wasn’t passing. I’m glad I was honest and told her she baffled me. I can’t make up my mind how I feel about the giant mushroom comment.

I keep trying to remember that we’re all like a bunch of icebergs crunching around together in the classroom. We can only see the top bits of each other’s lives, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface.

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Is there efficiencies? Cheese is cheese and sports is sports and college is college.

Posted on August 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

Earlier this week it was reported that Wisconsin legislators had “begun quietly and unofficially discussing” a possible merger between the UW Colleges, a system of 13 2-year campuses that award liberal arts associate degrees, and the Wisconsin Technical Colleges, a system of 16 campuses that award a variety of certificates and primarily technical associate degrees.

Now that the discussions have been widely reported, the quietness has come into question, and since it is an actual committee with a committee chair, the inquiries seem relatively official.

In considering the UW Colleges and the Wisconsin Technical Colleges, it is important to note that their funding systems, missions, and organizational structures are very different but the current UW System President, Ray Cross, presided over a similar merger in Minnesota, so some interested parties wonder if the merger is inevitable. Given that this is the same legislature that recently dispensed tenure and shared governance with lightning-fast dispatch during the budget process, some interested parties wonder how quickly this will come about, rather than whether it will come about.

Reporting on these discussions has drawn attention away from some much more interesting discussions happening in the legislature. Note: these are all quiet and unofficial and no legislators would go on record confirming these reports. Still, Wisconsin citizens should be concerned.

There are some now discussing a possible merger between the Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks.

“We’re just asking questions at this point, really,” said one Assembly rep who asked not to be named but agreed to be called Bucky during the interview. “Are there efficiencies to be gained from beer sales, for example? Are there unnecessary duplications of athletic trainers? I mean–how many ways are there to tape an ankle?”

“All that money we just provided for a new stadium—boy, if we could get the Bucks and Brewers to cooperate a little more, we might be able to redirect some of that money to some sorely needed areas.”

Like education? “No, I don’t mean education. They’ve admitted to how much bloat they have–they are cutting people right and left and assuring us that students’ experience won’t be affected, and I’m sure that’s true.  No, what I mean is loans to businesses and whatnot.”

A legislative aid was quoted as saying “a basketball court would totally fit on a baseball field. Just do the math.” He later added, “It almost seems like it was meant to be—I mean, Miller Park already has a roof.”

Even more controversial are discussions related to the merging of cheddar and swiss. “I don’t think that one’s going to happen,” said one long-time capitol observer. “Cheddar and American, maybe, but never Swiss.”

The uneasy alliance of cheddar and Swiss.

The uneasy alliance of cheddar and Swiss.

One state official lived up to her reputation for being “colorful” and “quirky” when she jumped into the conversation and said “I don’t know why your knickers are so twisted. Those cheeseheads are the color of cheddar but they got holes like swiss so we’re already doing it.”

Representative Bucky repeatedly emphasized that no one was considering monkeying with the Packers or State Fair cream puffs. “Some things are pretty much holy in Wisconsin,” he said.

He then added as an afterthought, almost a dreamy reverie really,”But I do wonder if people could get some kind of academic credit for taking part in a fantasy football league. I mean—I do a ton of research for mine. And grading would be easy-peasy. You end up with a winning record? You get an A. Not that I want to tell professors how to do their jobs or anything.”

No calls were returned from the offices of the UW Colleges or System President Ray Cross.

Probably because I made all of this up and no phone calls were made in the first place.

Actually the part about merging the UW Colleges and the Wisconsin Technical Colleges is not made up, I’m sorry to say.

___
Update:  a highly respected but very anonymous faculty member has commented that  “there could be promising efficiencies but I’d like to have a fully and completely partisan group analyze whether holes in swiss could be stuffed with cheddar.”

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