EDUCATION

DEAR RAT

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Our cat Leakey was named for the anthropologist. She arrived on our doorstep literally half-starved and Gary saw her first. When I got home, I picked her up and she purred like a motor boat. “Don’t touch it, don’t pick it up!” Gary said over and over, but who had fed her the can of tuna? I brought her into the house. She had fishhook claws and liked to tease the dog.

The other day when we came home from our morning walk, Gary did what he generally does and walked around the house. Just in case. That day he found a dead rat on the north side concrete walkway. No blood, no wound, an apparently sleek and healthy but certainly dead rat.

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RISK

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A friend traveled to her vacation house, another marched for justice, and our younger son and his children are here for the weekend.

Most of my yarn order arrived in the post office, but we will not visit before Monday or Tuesday. The website promoting my fifty-year high school reunion has not been updated for months. The painting I bought early in May is still lost by UPS. So is Gary’s CD from Estonia and the doll from Russia. I discovered that UPS does not acknowledge or search for lost packages until and unless you absolutely insist. Who knew? Continue reading →

PHISH

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My final offer for lower credit card interest rates came via a phone call just the other day. That’s not the last time I will receive it because despite the sincerity of the young woman’s tone and message and her assurance that they have been trying to contact me several times and this is my last chance, she’s lying. (And I really do not care about lowering my credit card interest rates because I have paid off my credit cards each month since my sons graduated from college.) My other credit card sent me a letter lowering our credit line because we’ve failed to use our card. The New Yorker keeps making their final offer—today it was $5 subscriptions—but then they will back in a couple of weeks offering me a tote bag to subscribe. The New York Times too. A few years ago I did not want information about aluminum siding because I have cedar shingle siding. I do not want a lot of things that telemarketers persist in offering—not replacement windows or senior housing or life insurance. Limited time offer. For a few weeks in March and April, we received no sales calls at all, and Gary and I looked at one another and said: Well, there’s something coming from the coronavirus. Continue reading →

GRADUATION

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The Atlantic‘s advice for the class of 2020

This year’s college graduates are having a very different graduation season than they probably imagined. At The Atlantic, we’ve been trying to help the class of 2020 retain at least one ritual: the commencement speech.

Here are a few words of wisdom for the graduate in your life:

That whole career-track thing you’ve been worrying about? Fundamentally interrupted. Don’t see this as a void; see it as a permission slip.

— David Brooks, Atlantic contributing writer and New York Times columnist Continue reading →

SPROUTS

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At the base of Hug Point, above, there is a roadway cut into the stone. You can see it, the cliff drops straight down to a short level place and then a little hump just to the left. That is how my great grand aunts, my grandparents, and my mother and her sister got to the beach from 1911 until the mid-1930s. They drove over a rough roadway cut into stone.

My tomato seedlings are growing their second set of true leaves, a sprouted mango pit needs to be put into soil, and the other night I dreamt about a former student, the only student I’ve ever had who I would still have said I disliked. Continue reading →

REVISE

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Part of an early quilt top before going out for quilting. Watermelon Sliced.

written yesterday: I should be weaving just now, and I have fabric pulled for a quilt of ordinary cotton, other block-printed fabric waiting for my attention, and an impressive stash of batik cotton. If I put my mind to it, I could have a couple of quilt tops done before summer. I could do three. A month and a half of steady work.

The catch, of course, is actually completing the work.

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The Mentalist: Reward and Routine

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Getting through a national crisis might be a little crazy like a police consultant following instinct and impression or it might be orderly like completing a knitted pair of socks. Maybe it’s a little of both. I have one sock of a pair in the works, knit top down. The leg part is done, the heel flap, and the heel is turned. I also have five book-length projects I could be working on just now, at least 350k words that need work. I could be working on revising those books, or I could be painting the hallway even though there is snow on the hills behind my house. (Because the paint is zero-VOC and I have brushes and a roller ready to go.) I could scrub dust from the baseboards or the molding of the bathroom door. I could sort my books or bake sweet rolls. I still have plenty of flour, five eggs, and sis sticks of butter. I could bake something. My husband says I should be doing our taxes. And I have the time. 

I am not going anywhere anytime soon.

Instead, I want to watch season 6 of The Mentalist. Continue reading →

Over the Rainbow

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Our older son was in Band in high school (sax) and our younger (first tenor) began Choir in middle school. I attended State competitions for both Band and Choir, but one year the Seaside High School choir director, Michelle Starke, directed a song from the middle of an auditorium with students all around the sides of the vast space. That meant the choir had to pay absolute attention to their director because sound does not travel instantly. To keep their voices together required discipline.

A California high school choir sang a capella from home. If you haven’t already seen it, you need to listen and watch this.

“School closures throughout the nation have halted highly-anticipated campus events and activities with hundreds of thousands of students practicing social distancing at home. While the annual Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) Choral Festival—originally scheduled for Wednesday, March 18—has been cancelled, our Chino Hills HS Chamber Singers demonstrated resilience by recording their individual a cappella portion of Over the Rainbow in their separate homes, and through technology were able to appear together as a family again. Their harmonious performance was shared online for the CVUSD community with the goal of spreading hope and cheer during this difficult time.”

And from novelist Nicola Griffith: “No one knows where we’re heading or what it’ll be like when we get there. So be kind. Be patient. Be cheerful. Don’t let yourself be ruled by fear. Choose love and compassion. Forgive yourself and others. Stay connected to others. Take your joy where you can. Try to assume good intent. If you feel bad, be kind to yourself. And remember that some people out there will be in a bad way, mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. If you can spare anything extra—money, kindness, patience, a mask, the benefit of the doubt, a moment to listen—you might brighten one small corner of the world. Do your best to be a fine human being. And we might all get through this.”

DEFINE TERMS

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Early in the school year, I used to do vocabulary activities in my junior English classes. They required the use of hardcover dictionaries and most often teamwork. In each case the terms and their definitions were written into classroom journals which could be accessed during quizzes and exams. No need to write any of this down, I’d say, but if you find you need the information during a test, you can look it up in your own journals. Sometimes I did this twice.

The short version had four words: “sympathy,” “pity,” “empathy,” and “compassion,” and illustrates the classic case of dictionary definitions that reference one another. Continue reading →

TREE SKIRTS

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Over the years three boys in my Junior English classes argued in their research papers that nuclear power was the cheap, non-polluting, and safe alternative to fossil fuels. They were blissfully unaware that radiation is deadly. They did not want to hear about it. When one boy asked an engineer via email whether there were any health dangers associated with nuclear power, he was oblivious to the sarcasm dripping from the nuclear expert’s response: None. I pointed out that a nuclear engineer was certainly an expert but not on health. No matter. He found an industry website that gave him the quote he needed to prove his thesis.

1 million years

That’s how long Germany has to keep the radioactive waste from all of its nuclear power plants buried for it to be safe. The country recently closed all of its nuclear power plants and is looking for a way — and a place — to make the million-year commitment.

Nuclear fuel is only cheap if you do not count the waste left behind. It is absolutely polluting in itself as well in the vast amount of water heated while cooling the reactors, and safe? Seriously? Why did I have to keep bringing this up. Radiation is dangerous. At least acknowledge that and work from there. But these young writers were determined to ignore any information that countered their thesis.

We want to believe what we want to believe sometimes. Climate change is not happening. The hearings are unfair. I do not have to testify. I am safe to drive. I do not have to tell you. My situation is different. 

Yes, it is. They are fair. You do and you should. No, you’re not. Yes, you do. It’s the same for everyone else.

It is inconvenient to face facts.

There is no magic in pretending. What we believe is not the same as what we know. Faith in what we want does not have the permanence of truth in the real world.

Year after year, the majority of my students chose to write their persuasive essays about something they already believed and many of them left cavernous gaps in their argument because they could not be objective in their research. And year after year a few students chose to write about something they did not already believe and generally wrote better papers as a result. Once in a great while students changed their minds, and that was most impressive of all.

Yesterday I addressed holiday cards. They say “Happy New Year!” so there really is no hurry sending them out. It’s just one of those things on our list like ordering candles (done) and finding a tree (also done) and wrapping gifts (whoops). My approach to the holidays is to spread the labor throughout the year so that I can better enjoy the season. This must be a habit left over from having two toddlers and six dogs (with weekly grooming I did myself), and later a job that overwhelmed my time. I even held a holiday Open House for years when the kids were small. (Baking done each night after I got home from school for a month in advance.) Get it done early so that I am “not rushing about at the last minute,” as my mother used to warn me.

By the time the big Black Friday sales begin, my shopping is already done because I started a year ago. I am free to enjoy the season. Yes?

Does that really work for me anymore?

I’m not certain. The truth is that I enjoy making and buying presents. The truth is that I am one of those people who overdo the holidays. The truth is that my mother never entertained so I had no model for how to do that. The truth is my husband had a genuinely impoverished childhood and this was a dreaded season for him before we met, but now he loves it all. So that mission is accomplished.

Is that the goal? I check my list and mark off the tasks and something always remains undone.

There is a tree in our living room and NaNo is done and I still have to seal and stamp cards and one bed is crowded with gifts waiting to be wrapped. I am still knitting. This year I have several projects I hope to complete sooner rather than later. I thought I might actually sew patchwork tree skirts for family members. That project has been on my list literally for years. It generally haunts me till New Years. I plan each year to start on them earlier . . . and then I don’t.

I have already decided that to cross out tree skirts. It is good to let go of some obligations. It is best to face truth that everything cannot and need not be done. I am not sewing tree skirts.

There’s always something.