Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

How can this be? Such calm, such peace, such solitude in this world of woe? This is the way poet David Budbill's poem, " The Sixth of January " ends. Around the country, and probably in many corners of the world, people are contemplating how, just three years ago, American life was shaken to the core. In some ways, the riot and attack on the Capitol in an effort to stop the formal certification of the election of President Biden, was more devastating to our country than the events of 9/11. After the attack on 9/11, our country came together, if briefly, to reassert what it is we say we believe in. We are still suffering the effects and poison from January 6th. The heart and soul of the country have been badly bruised, if not damaged irreparably. And we are entering another murky time of hate speech, smear politics, and incessant bombardment of nasty ads and stupid phone polls. It's exhausting.  But yet, this morning, I snuggled peacefully and calmly with the toddler i...

Epiphany is the sort of culmination of the Christmas season (unless you are one of the die-hards who are holding out for Candlemas, which I may be). The Wise Men finally get to the stable to present their prophetic gifts to the Child: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Treasure, to be sure, and all symbolic, regarding kingship and his ultimate sacrifice.  All jokes about casseroles, diapers, and asking for directions aside (though those are funny), the idea of a truly epiphanic moment intrigues me. We are all looking for the Holy Aha! moment, aren't we? The world is a chaotic, violent place, at least for far too many people. Our own country is in some sort of fever dream. And even our local towns are rife with grumbling and divisiveness. This can't be all there is, can it? I sure hope not.  T.S. Eliot (yes, that poet, and yes, I know about his personal beliefs, which I do not hold with) wrote a poem titled " The Hollow Men ," which ends with  This is the way the world en...

Well, that's why I don't go camping.  The smoke situation from the neighbor's house is dire; my upstairs was so smoky, that I was up every hour last night. Asthma sucks. So does this situation. I ordered two air purifiers that should be in today, and I pray those help.  That said, at least the smoke is not from my own pellet stove. I'd hate to be the cause of my own demise. So today, I'll use my inhaler, take a hot shower, and hope that things are better at work. The smell from Tuesday's furnace misfire was far less yesterday, but still enough to give me (and others) a nasty headache and my eyes were burning.  I suspect I'm a bit spoiled; other people around the globe have to deal with poor air quality every day where they live. I'm used to breathing without a whole lot of thought. The residual particulate matter in the air all summer from the wildfires in Canada really triggered my breathing problems, but at least I could go inside to escape when the da...

There's something quaint but also timeless about reading the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder with a bunch of teenagers. The dialogue and some of the situations are a little dated, but mostly, the play hits home time and again. Where I teach is a very small town in the northern part of New Hampshire; the play is set in the southern part of the state, but the size of the town, the gossip, the daily concerns of the characters are all very familiar to us today.  We finished Act I yesterday, and my question to the class was simply: Why would anyone write a play about pretty average people doing pretty average things?  The answer is actually embedded in the monologue about the time capsule that the Stage Manager delivers, which focuses on how we only know about kings and contracts from history, and he wants to put a copy of the play in the box alongside the newspapers and Shakespeare. But the better, deeper answer almost always comes from the kids themselves, something about how th...

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go... We have about three weeks left of this semester, and there's still so much to do. Will the world come to a screeching halt if we don't get it all done? No, but it would be nice if I could get the kids across the finish line.  Today, I think we'll form a plan that will do just that: I'll review what's left to do and what's next. In my creative writing class, we are reading Our Town as part of this last section of study, "Literature of Place." In the College Comp I class, we are embarking on literary analysis, using short fiction. Today, I'll begin with a favorite short story by Howard Frank Mosher, "High Water." The characters are clearly drawn, mostly through dialogue, but also in how they respond to and contend with the physical environment. Over the next two weeks, we will read eight short stories from a wide variety of authors, and then they'll choose their individual favorites to work on...

It's a new year, according to the calendar. The natural world has no clue, and other cultures that work on a different calendar system might disagree as well, but here we are. The date may have changed, but we are the same people we were just a few hours ago. That said, we are not fixed in place. We can, with intention, try to do better, be better, make saner and safer and healthier choices. Habits take about a month to establish if they are good ones, but little to no time to backslide. That's probably why we keep re-starting; it's hard to grow.  But we do have the chance.  That said, I hope everyone had a relatively peaceful night doing whatever it is they were doing. I fell asleep in my chair (per usual), didn't read a whole lot after all, and wandered off to bed around 11. I did not see any ball drop, did not partake of any frivolity or festivities. I just sat quietly, nodded off, and went to bed. The neighbors a few streets up the hill blew stuff up, as is their pr...

I was tempted to rant about the napless toddler day we had yesterday, or the smoky smell in my house from neighbors' woodstoves and an unfortunate, lengthy temperature inversion, or about yet another chaotic stress dream that involved unruly students, a truncated schedule, and me losing my voice and my temper. Then I stopped-- why do it? We all have niggling bull-marlarky stuff in our lives. Others of us are contending --still contending-- with much more dangerous, unsettling things: there are horrible wars raging around our globe, there are mean, selfish, rude people who wield actual political/social/economic power stalking our country, there are people dealing with sudden illness, unexpected deaths of parents, and so on. Who gives a damn, really, about petty stuff? I can open a window. This past year has been one of those that fall under the heading, "living in interesting times," which, in the original context, was more of a threat than an wish or observation. We have...