Lost Buildings

Many years ago now, the house in which my grandparents used to live burned to the ground. With it, we lost a good-sized collection of historic family documents and photos that my dad had collected and organized in his Alex-Haley's-Roots-inspired geneology binge. (One of the few family vacations we ever took was a two-week drive back to West Virginia, from whence the Dyer family came to Kansas.)

Needless to say, there aren't many photographs of what the family homestead used to look like. Many of the photos have been lost (and the stories are fading). I thought I would share a couple of photos sent to me by my Aunt Sharon (my dad's younger sister). I had asked her if she had any pictures of the old barn, that I remember from my youngest childhood days. She sent what she could find.


My grandparent's house, photographed from the pasture across the road. The old barn is behind the house, on the left.





















A better picture of the old barn (and Aunt Sharon's cat, PeeWee).

Big Decisions

As Kirby and I were having coffee the other day, with my sabbatical departure just days away, he commented, "So, you're making some big decisions.... What books are you taking with you?"

This is one of the reasons I love Kirby. Big decisions relate--as they should--to reading lists, to "the company we keep" (CF: Wayne Booth). I figured that perhaps the contents of my book box would be an appropriate way to kick of the slate of sabbatical-related posts that are to follow. Thus, here's the list. (Subject to negotiation with my wife over how much of the space in the van can be dedicated to books, of course.)

Duh:

• Bible.
• Dictionary.

Spiritual Autobiographies & Memoirs:

• Augustine. Confessions.
• Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood.
• John Hildebrand. Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family.
• Ted Kooser. Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps.
• Thomas Merton. The Seven Storey Mountain.
• Henri Nouwen. The Genesee Diary.
• Scott Russell Sanders. A Private History of Awe.

Ranching Books:

• Gordon Hazard. Thoughts and Advice from an Old Cattleman.
• Greg Judy. No-Risk Ranching: Custom Grazing on Leased Land.
• Allan Nation. Knowledge-Rich Ranching.

Essay Collections:

• Wendell Berry. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry.
• -----. Home Economics.
• -----. The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays.
• -----. What are People For?
• Best American Essays (2004-2007).
• Elizabeth Dodd. Prospect: Journeys & Landscapes.
• Scott Russell Sanders. The Force of Spirit.
• -----. Hunting for Hope.

Poetry:

• Scott Cairns. Philokalia: New & Selected Poems.
• Ellmann & O'Clair, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
• Richard Wilbur. Collected Poems: 1943-2004.
• William Carlos Williams. Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems.
• James Wright. Above the River: The Complete Poems.

On Writing:

• Theodore A. Rees Cheney. Writing Creative Nonfiction: Fiction Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction.
• Forche & Gerard, eds. Writing Creative Nonfiction.

Other:

• Kenneth Davis. Kansas: A History.
• Betty Edwards. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
• Michael Francis Gibson. The Mill and the Cross: Peter Bruegel's "Way to Calvary."
• Kansas Geology: An Introduction to Landscapes, Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils.
• Elaine Scarry. On Beauty and Being Just.
• Shakespeare. Macbeth.

Because the Work of USF Must Go On:

• Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking.
• James A. Herrick. The History and Theory of Rhetoric.
• Kennedy & Gioia. Backpack Literature.

Pity Party

For the last year or two, the following passage from Wendell Berry's "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community" has been an lens through which I've come to perceive everything from my family to my colleagues to writing centers to the local church.

But a community makes itself up in more intimate circumstances than a public. And the health of the community depends absolutely on trust. A community knows itself and knows its place in a way that is impossible for a public (a nation, say, or a state). A community does not come together by a covenant, by a conscientious granting of trust. It exists by proximity, by neighborhood; it knows face-to-face, and it trusts as it knows. It learns, in the course of time and experience, what and who can be trusted. It knows that some of its members are untrustworthy, and it can be tolerant, because to know in this matter is to be safe. A community member can be trusted to be untrustworthy and so can be included. (A community can trust its liars to be liars, for example, and so enjoy them.) But if a community withholds trust, it withholds membership. If it cannot trust, it cannot exist. ("Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community")

I like Berry's distinction between a public and a community, between a social covenant and a communal tapestry of experience and knowledge. And, I particularly like the notion that the presence of community allows folks to be tolerant of--and even find pleasure in--those it might typically shun, such as Berry's untrustworthy and liars. This notion has reframed the way I think about the diverse range of personalities and perspectives accumulated in the communities of which I am a part.

But, this week it suddenly dawned on me that in at least one of my communities, I am the one being tolerated. In much the same way that Berry's hypothetical community would enjoy its liars, my community smiles, perhaps rolls its collective eyes, and extends a lot of grace to one whose ways of thinking almost never seem to align with the dominant perspective.

When positioned as a member of the majority, I find Berry's thoughts enable a tolerance for and an appreciation of the folks who are Other-than-me. But, when positioned as the Other, I find Berry's passage bittersweet, for even the good fortune of being tolerated, included, and enjoyed can eventually become tiresome. It can even feel a bit condescending. I suspect there are important distinctions to be made between the natures of tolerance, inclusion, and membership. When inclusion feels less like membership and more like tolerance, one simply wants to withdraw and invest his efforts elsewhere.

This, I think, is why Berry's emphasis on a local, largely geographically bound community is so important. When communities are plentiful and one can easily move from one to another, or when communities are virtual and possess little obligation for continued interaction, it is so easy to stick out a thumb and move on down the road. In a culture that celebrates--perhaps even worships--both literal and metaphorical mobility, it's so easy give up on the community of proximity and neighborhood and end up with merely a public. But, I'll admit that there are some seasons when a mere public seems fairly attractive.

Serendipity

During the spring '08 semester, I'm on sabbatical, spending the first half here in Sioux Falls and then traveling back to Kansas from late March through at least the end of May. My family and I will be staying at my dad's ranch, where I'll be working with my dad and diving into a writing project centered around my rural childhood, my distance from my family's ranching background, the influences that remain, etc., etc. When describing the project, I find myself citing the two muses of Wendell Berry and Hank Williams, Jr. An odd pairing, I realize, but hopefully that oddness promises some interesting terrain to cover.

Having gotten most of the academic paperwork off of my desk during the month of January, I finally started in on some of the reading planned in connection with the sabbatical. This evening, I was reading a profile of Hank Williams, Jr., in Peter Guralnick's Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians. Since my familiarity with Hank junior's music centers almost exclusively around my high school days and drinking ill-advised quantities of beer in the parking lots of the Chatauqua County Fair & Rodeo, I never felt compelled to dive into Hank junior's biography. Clearly, I knew who his father was, but that was about it.

Evidently, in August of 1975, as I was getting ready to turn 8, Hank junior was mountain climbing in Montana with a friend. He fell 490 feet and nearly died. The serendipity: His friend's name was Bill Dyer, which also happens to be my dad's name.

Writers of the World, Unite!

Here's a nifty little video explaining the Writers' Guild strike. For more information , visit United Hollywood. And for some interesting videos in support of the strike, visit Speechless. I've never wanted to read lips so badly as when I viewed the Sean Penn video.

Diversion

Here's a diversion to eat up 10 - 15 minutes of your day.

FYI: The comments posted to the page in linked above includes a link to the following web site, which includes an article written about this spinning silhouette: http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/sze_silhouette/index.html

Teaching with Exigence

NPR recently broadcasted a story (available via podcast) about Soldier's Heart: Teaching Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, a new book by Elizabeth Samet. I haven't read the book, but listening to the podcast and Samet's comments about teaching young officers-to-be, many of whom will likely be going to war, I couldn't help wondering how the exigence supplied by an active war might shape the transaction of reading, the exchange that takes place in the classroom, the instructor's choices about texts, topics of discussion, etc.

For most of us teaching in higher education, there is simply little sense of exigence. This is true of both teachers and students, both of whom are too easily isolated--temporally and spatially--from the contexts and challenges our students will experience once their schooling is finished. This isolation is generated by all sorts of factors: the abundance that surrounds us, our priviledged place within that abundance, the variety of contexts our students will encounter upon graduation.

How would our teaching change if we had a more immediate and concrete sense of the challenges our students would confront? How would levels of student engagement change with a greater sense of exigence? Can such exigence be framed or generated with authenticity?

I'm A Loaner

In the last year, I've become a podcast junkie. Well, not a junkie, but I do have a handful of podcasts that I listen to regularly: the New York Times Book Review, NPR Books, Slate.com, Dave Ramsey, the Academy of American Poets poetcast, and sermons by friends and former pastors.

The Slate.com Daily Podcast recently included Bill Clinton's address to the Slate 60--a collection of the 60 most giving philanthropists over the last year. In his remarks, Clinton referred to an organization called Kiva, which provides individuals the opportunity to participate in loaning money to small businesses in developing countries (a.k.a. microfinancing). The idea intrigued me, so I visited the site. Loaners get to select the borrower they want to support, so I'm now contributing $25 toward a loan for a barber in Lebanon. Why did I select a barber, of all things? I suppose it's another Wendell Berry thing. Looking at the profiles of all these folks seeking a loan, I saw "barber" and thought of Jayber Crow. Who wouldn't want to support Jayber Crow?

I'm still trying to decide whether I'm comfortable with being a loaner rather than a giver. If anyone knows of a Kiva-like means of giving, let me know. Perhaps I'll revisit this issue when I've taken more time to think it through.

Theme Songs

During conversation at a friend's birthday party, the subject of personal theme songs surfaced. I've been ruminating on the topic for the last couple of days, and I've finally settled on my "Top Twelve."

These are the songs that fulfill the "theme song" definition provided on Ally McBeal: "...something you can play in your head to make you feel better." While there are a lot of other songs that I get excited about, many of them have an impact due to either mere nostalgia or a certain shadowy catharsis that doesn't quite fit the Ally McBeal definition. Also, I decided, rather arbitrarily, to allow only one song from any individual artist--thus, only one song by U2, John Mellencamp, and Simple Minds.

In any event, here's the top twelve, listed alphabetically by artist:

"Soak up the Sun" : Sheryl Crow
"Don’t Bring Me Down" : ELO
"One Thing Leads to Another" : The Fixx
"You Dropped a Bomb on Me" : The Gap Band
"Walkin’ on Sunshine" : Katrina and the Waves
"Small Town" : John Mellencamp
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" : Nirvana
"Alive and Kickin’" : Simple Minds
"Come Sail Away" : Styx
"Mysterious Ways" : U2
"Jump" : Van Halen
"A Country Boy Can Survive" : Hank Williams, Jr.

Because I will find it virtually impossible to narrow this list to a single song, I've set up a poll in the sidebar so that anyone who cares to weigh in can do so. Just know that the final decision--if it ever gets made--will be mine. :)

Michael Vick & Finding Jesus

Those of you familiar with the online magazine Slate.com may already be aware that Slate has started a new video section titled Slate V. They use this part of the Slate.com site to distribute short video segments. They've done some good stuff.

One regular feature--and one that I tend to find rather annoying--is the collaboration with MediaCurves.com. MediaCurves takes video segments (e.g., political advertisements and speeches, news segments, press conferences, etc.) and shows them to a group of viewers who rate the believability (or some other criteria) of the segment while it plays. They then overlay a graph of the viewer feedback onto the video segment. Slate V features some of the these videos.

The latest is MediaCurves viedo on Slate V is one featuring Michael Vick's apology. The apology and the viewer response are mostly what one would expect. What caught my attention is the very end of the video clip, when Vick states:

Through this situation, I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness. And have turned my life over to God. I think that’s the right thing to do as of right now.

There's a lot to be considered simply in terms of rhetoric. One has to wonder if Vick and/or the writer of the apology thought the viewing public would respond positively to this statement of new-found faith. And, if they did, one has to wonder about the choice of "as of right now" as a qualifier.

In any event, the viewer reaction from MediaCurves is intriguing.

gad

Winner at Jacob's Well

I keep tabs from time to time on the web site for Jacob’s Well, a church in Kansas City planted by an acquaintance of mine, Tim Keel. In perusing the MP3 files on the Jacob’s Well site, I noticed that earlier this year they hosted Lauren Winner, whose three public speaking engagements were included in the MP3s. While each of Winner’s three talks are well worth listening to, I was particularly struck by the one on “Sex, Marriage, and Singleness.”

In discussing Matthew 22:23-33 , Winner notes that the passage rankles and confuses happily married people:

This passage is to my mind on of the most revealing moments in the gospel about the radical nature of Jesus’s call to us, because it suggests not that married people won’t see their spouse again, it suggests that marriage is not the defining relationship of even a marital relationship, and that the defining relationship between all of us, the relationship that will obtain throughout time and beyond time into eternity is the relationship of brother and sister in Christ. […] If that confuses what you think about marriage, just try to think about what it means for parenting. […] It would be pretty wild and radical to think that what my job was as a parent would be to raise my sister or brother in Christ, and that that would be my fundamental relationship. Weird.

More generally, the talk focuses on both marriage and singleness and the lessons each has to teach the church. It concludes with a quotation from an Eastern Orthodox theologian, Paul Avdokomov (sp?). The quotation is about marriage and singleness, but—more interesting to me—it’s also about calling and vocation more generally.

We should think of vocation as an invitation, a call from the friend. I accept it today in the contours of my present situation, until the time when I will perhaps see more clearly. One’s vocation is found exactly on the crest between necessity and creative freedom, along the line of faith which reveals the direction as its free and strong confession grows. One’s entire vocation, whether to marriage or singleness, is an option. It is an answer to a call that has been heard. It can simply be the present condition. It is never a voice that clarifies everything. The dimness inherence in the life of faith never leaves us. There is one thing we can be sure of, that every vocation is accompanied by a renunciation. One who is married renounced monastic heroism. A monk renounced the married life. The rich young man of the gospel is not invited either to marry or to enter a monastery. He had to renounce his wealth, his having, his preferences, in order to follow the Lord. However, in all cases of deprivation that scripture speaks of, grace offers a gift, and out of a negative renunciation it creates a positive vocation.

Folks interested in listening to the entire MP3 can find it here.

One Thing Leads to Another

First, gotta love the Fixx. Another one of those weird convergence moments hit yesterday. To explain it, I need to go back. Last year, I applied for and was one of three persons interviewed for a position at a large state university. The committee decided not to make a hire, which, objectively, I can see was a wise choice for everyone involved. While I believe I could have done the job well, it meant redefining my professional life in ways I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue so singlemindedly. And, from their end, I didn't have some qualifications they desired--like a publication record or administrative experience at a university with a larger, more diverse student body. (Of course, I could have simply come across as a moron. One doesn't really get feedback after such interviews.) In any event, I don't know that I would have been a good fit for the job nor the job for me. But, as I told some friends, "It's one thing to not want to go to the party. It's another to not be invited."

Fast forward back to the present. After reading Wendell Berry's essay "The Unsettling of America" and beginning to consider what it might mean to pursue "settlement" in my life, my profession, etc., I stumble across the web to find a brief announcement about the aforementioned position being filled. I wasn't experiencing much in the way of "settlement," I'm afraid. Mostly indignation and dissatisfaction. Not because of the person who was hired, but because I wasn't.

So what do I do? I start Googling. I skim a couple of articles from the new hire's admirable vita. Insecurities surface. Indignation. Resentment and regret over all the choices that led me to where and who I am. The prideful part of me starts to reassure myself that I could have the new hire's vita if I really wanted it. I consider downloading the new hire's picture and using it as a motivational wallpaper on my computer's desktop. I start thinking about the school loans that could have been paid with the salary I would have made. Should have made....

About half way through the second article, however, I begin to realize that--admirable as the articles are--they aren't the kind of thing I really want to do. They are the kind of specialized scholarship that simply doesn't excite me. Perhaps I've been thoroughly converted to the liberal arts mindset, but I still hope to find a way to write (and perhaps publish) regularly and productively without having to select a narrow academic specialty.

So, I never downloaded the new hire's photo for my wallpaper (but I won't rule it out just yet), and I'm in the process of re-establishing an awkward peace about the whole thing. The peace comes from knowing that my insecurities and indignation arise from a prideful desire for a salary and position that aren't really connected with what I want to do. The awkwardness comes from the questions that linger after reading Berry--questions about the distinctions between "settlement" and merely "settling."

Settlement

Okay. I’ve decided that I really need to get (back?) into the habit of using this blog. Given the fact that I’m reading a lot of Wendell Berry for a presentation at the 2007 Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA) regional conference in October, this decision means that this blog is going to seem like a Berry blog for a while.

After talking with Liberty about my summer reading, I’ve decided that I’m going to alternate between Berry’s collection of short stories titled That Distant Land and his collection of essays titled The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (ed. Norman Wirzba). I just finished reading the essay titled “The Unsettling of America,” in which Berry sheds the dichotomy between conqueror and victim for the terms exploitation and nurture.

Let me outline as briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order--a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.(39)

Berry prefers these terms, in part, because they “describe a division not only between persons but also within persons” (39). When I consider this division in my professional life, I have to confront the fact that I serve--in some capacity--“an institution or organization.” Thankfully, my role as professor and director of a writing center place me in the service of the people who come to the university. I get to be one of the nurturers (I hope) within the institution. But, I can’t help wondering when and how I slide into the role of exploiter. For example, when do I find myself thinking in terms of the writing center (as institution) rather than the writers we seek to serve? When do I find myself thinking of my students in terms of “how much and how quickly [they] can be made to produce”? To what degree does the nature of the institution (generally or specifically) enable me to think, act, and live as nurturer rather than exploiter?

A classroom of students can respond just as unpredictably as a piece of land, and that response is tied to a whole bunch of variables--some of which are outside of the farmer’s/teacher’s influence. But the analogy breaks down when one considers that those students--individually and collectively--have a will that one doesn’t find in a piece of land. Students, too, can find themselves wrestling with the divisions between exploiter and nurturer. Thus, in addition to self-examination, one must end up asking how to help shape a community that tends toward nurturing.

Berry asserts that the answers (to his questions, at least) "are to be found in our history: in its until now subordinate tendency of settlement, of domestic permanence" (45). What does "settlement" look like for a professor? For a student? For a writing center? For communities--like institutions of higher education--that depend upon recurrent waves of students with an ambitious and decidedly unsettled eye toward the horizon?

Remembering

One of the things I love about my life and the purposes and people it includes, is the potential for convergence--between...what? ...plotlines? ...themes? When one's life is dominated by story, a certain intertextuality just seems to occur more often. I suppose the same happens for other folks with other jobs, but the frequency of those moments just seems higher due to my life as a teacher and a reader.

Tonight, during (literally) a couple minutes of reading while I was waiting for my wife, who was waiting to switch laundry before coming to bed, a couple of plotlines intersected. And in this case, as in many others, Wendell Berry helped usher me to the crossroads.

First, as part of the board for the Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA), I'm working on the proposal review stage for our conference in October 2007. My own proposal focuses on literary worlds and how literary places--like Berry's Port William--might generate questions or perspectives that could inform our work in writing centers.

Second, even though there is still a solid month and tons of grading and a million other things to be done before this semester is over, I've been wrestling with that melancholy which arises when I realize students whom I admire, respect, and treasure--students who come as close to being friends as the barriers of age and institutional position will allow--are on the verge of leaving campus. Such melancholy is wholly selfish, of course, but I suppose that is part of what makes it notable.

Then, tonight, I picked up Berry's collection of short stories titled This Distant Land, mostly to preview quickly before bed, in hopes of getting an early start on actually developing the project for the conference. I got through the epigraph, and now I'm staying up late to write this blog post. Here's the epigraph, which will probably end up becoming an inscription on a graduation card or two. The epigraph is a passage from Berry's novel titled Remembering, and the formatting is in the original.

Oh that I should ever forget We stood by the wagon saying goodbye or trying to & I seen it come over her how far they was a going & she must look at us to remember us forever & it come over her pap and me and the others We stood & looked & knowed it was all the time we had & from now on we must remember We must look now forever Then Will rech down to her from the seat & she clim up by the hub of the wheel & set beside him & he spoke to the team She had been Betsy Rowanberry two days who was bornd Betsy Coulter 21 May 1824 Will turnd the mules & they stepd into the road passd under the oak & soon was out of sight down the hill The last I seen was her hand still raisd still waving after wagon & all was out of sight Oh it was the last I seen of her that little hand Afterwards I would say to myself I could have gone with them as far as the foot of the hill & seen her that much longer I could have gone on as far as the river mouth & footed it back by dark But however far I finaly would have come to wher I would have to stand and see them go on that hand a waving God bless her I never knowd what become of her I will never see her in this world again

Having typed it out, I wonder if it seems a bit too much for the wholly expected and not-nearly-so-permanent departure of students from a university. But it resonates somehow. It reminds me of E. A. Robinson's poem "The Sheaves," which always dominates my thinking during times of seasonal change.

ETF #1: Aslan's Forum

As I begin this project of Embracing the Funk (ETF), I'm going to start with Aslan's Forum--partly because it's on my mind today, and partly because its contribution to the funk is minimal.

Aslan's Forum is a readers' forum at Oak Hills Baptist Church. The forum, originally facilitated by Wendell Hoffman, was a big reason why my wife and I chose to attend Oak Hills. Moving from the Dallas metroplex to Sioux Falls, I had pretty much given up on the possibility of having a thoughtful, intellectual reading group, or something like Denton Bible Church's Lay Institute. But, when we visited Oak Hills, the sign for Aslan's Forum was stading smack-dab in the middle of the hallway. The group became a real blessing for me.

The forum continues to provide a number of blessings, as I get to enable and participate in an ongoing discussion of books that both interrogate and support the Christian faith. In some ways, Aslan's Forum is what I wish teaching could be--interested and engaged readers gathering to learn from one another. (On the best of days, that's what the classroom can be like.)

Aslan's rarely contributes to the funk. There are, of course, moments when one wishes turnout was greater, but I'm thankful for the core group of regular attenders who allow me to learn from them. There are, also, times when I think I ought to be reading other poets, criticism, etc., in order to reinvigorate my writing life. But the books and the discussions associated with Aslan's Forum provide the sort of nourishment that shapes my thinking about my faith and my world, thereby serving any writing I do, rather than detracting from it. And, the forum comprises my most consistent means of serving and ministering inside the church, which I think is vitally important.

For those who might be interested, the reading list for 2006-2007 is included below. Anyone interested in participating can obtain more details from the web site for Aslan's Forum.

• October 2006: Stephen Prothero's American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a Cultural Icon
  
• November 2006: Kathleen Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
  
• December 2006: Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz
  
• February 2007: Andrew Beaujon's Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock
  
• March 2007: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
  
• April 2007: J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  
• May 2007: C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves
  

Embrace the Funk

Thursday, after a very busy day of committee work, I received an email from a colleague noting that I looked tired and thanking me for a list of committees and concerns to which I have been contributing. Then, today, I attended the South Dakota Festival of Books, and--as always happens when I attend such events--I came away with this huge sense of...well, I've described it elsewhere as a "funk."

My colleague's email inadvertently highlighted a list of invovlements and activities that are important, but not necessarily a part of my job, and certainly not a part of the larger vision I would like to be pursuing for my career and my life. I have fallen back into the very conditions I promised myself I would be escaping. Here's a passage from my tenure portfolio, submitted and approved last year:

As I began my career at USF, I envisioned myself initiating and maintaining a writing center while most of my more research-oriented activities centered on my life as a writer. Instead, five years later, I find my program of professional development shaped largely by the wonderful complexities of writing center work and the joy of teaching a variety of coursework within the English department. My writing life, on the contrary, has taken a back seat. The pendulum has swung too far, and my goal looking forward is to renew the pursuit of the balance.

Three weeks into a new semester, it's become increasingly clear that I've yet to "renew the pursuit" of anything, much less balance. Indeed, I appear to have strayed further from the goal, taking on involvements that aren't obligations, that aren't likely to be productive, and that aren't--or shouldn't be, really--my job.

Thus, over the course of the next week or so, I'm going to embrace the funk, as I attempt to evaluate my involvements and figure out what to winnow. If you're on a funk-free kick, then you'll probably want to avoid this blog for a week or so.

A Remarkable Thing

Well, today is a better day, as the pre-semester funk has abated for now. One reason for this was the chance to talk with members of the freshmen class who chose to participate in USF's freshmen reading program. Last-minute preparations for our discussion of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead reacquainted me with the following quotation from the novel:

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even in the most private thought--the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider. (45)

That is a remarkable thing, and one so easily forgotten in the rush of syllabus construction, and photocopying, and scheduling, and anticipating the mountains of papers coming my way over the next few months.

I know the parallel between preaching and teaching is potentially problematic for many. (And for me, depending upon how one defines/characterizes those two endeavors.) But, as I conceive the two, the parallel seems to resonate. Almost eighteen months ago I found myself considering a similar notion.

Pre-Semester Funk

The fall semester gets underway here at USF on Wednesday, and I've suddenly been struck with the pre-semester funk. I've been excitedly working on syllabi and planning out courses. I've been looking ahead at all of the projects and opportunities that the semester holds. And I was (and am, mostly) looking forward to everything. But then....

1) I received an email from John Poch, a treasured friend who was writing to encourage me--to goad me, actually--into applying for a Bush Foundation artist fellowship. I placed an advance order for John's new book and then left the Bush Foundation stuff to check for another day.


2) My wife and I screened Akeelah and the Bee to see if the kids were ready for it. (Not yet.) At the heart of the movie is this quotation by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

3) One of my closest friends emailed an update on his writing project, stating that it wasn't going to be done for this fall (as originally intended), but that he was writing regularly and felt good about the sudden burst of discipline in his life.

4) Following my friend's email, I looked up the guidelines for applying for the Bush Foundation artist fellowships, only to find that I haven't published enough in the last six years to qualify.

Suddenly the semester ahead seems too full. Too encumbered by the duties and obligations (and yes, the joys) of teaching, and serving, and administrating, and ...committee-ing. I'm suddenly in a funk, and these two poems come surging back into my mind. The first by Rilke. The second by James Wright.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We never knew his fantastic head,
where eyes like apples ripened. Yet
his torso, like a lamp, still glows
with his gaze which, although turned down low,

lingers and shines. Else the prow of his breast
couldn't dazzle you, nor in the slight twist
of his loins could a smile run free
through that center which held fertility.

Else this stone would stand defaced and squat
under the shoulders' diaphanous dive
and not glisten like a predator's coat;

and not from every edge explode
like starlight: for there's not one spot
that doesn't see you. You must change your life.

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

ENG 200: Wilfred Owen

As I was re-reading the poems for class, I found myself thinking about Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" ("It is sweet and fitting"). At the most superficial level, I suppose one could catalog my response to the poem under the category of "the more things change...." One can't help but be struck by the relevance of this poem (written in 1920) within the context of our current role in Iraq and around the world. Given our culture's general lack of an historical mindset, the poem's emphasis one chemical warfare--as opposed to tanks or mortar rounds, or some other more conventional weapon) seems hauntingly prescient. Except, of course, it wasn't. Chemical warfare was a part of WWI just as it is a part of contemporary war.

More specifically, I found myself really admiring the opening spondees in the first two lines. I can't help but read those lines with something of a sneer, in part because of that insistent rhythm at the beginning of those lines.

Also, the following lines were compelling:

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. (13-14)

As I reread the poem, I the words "panes" and "thick green light" for some reason linked in my brain with the media-saturated nature of our current war. In a way, we're all watching kids die through the "misty panes" and "thick green light" of our television sets. Except, of course, that we're not. We're not watching kids die. We see explosions and bombing raids, but we're isolated from the not only the dangers, but also the meaningful perception of those dangers. We don't have to walk along "behind the wagon," and thus we remain--over 80 years later--still willing to tell our kids that "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." For sure, we say so with less enthusiasm than we might in another time, but the message is largely the same.

gad

Peanut Butter for a New Semester

Probably the greatest thing about living the academic life (well, a good thing, anyway) is the opportunity for a new start every semester. New books. New students. Since my students in ENG 222 will be required to maintain a blog as a reading journal, I get the chance to revitalize my own blogging practice.

We're also trying a new experiment. We're using a wiki for the first time this semester. Students will post information connected with their lit. circles to the wiki, creating sort of a mini-reference book for the semester, etc. I'm anxious to see how it unfolds.

I chose to use PBWiki. They provide a free account. (Premium accounts are also available.) And the interface seems to be quite straightforward, which I'll need since both me and my students are covering new ground.

Let the games begin.