Cold Nights

This evening a wind blows that I've felt before.  There is snow and a bitter wind to follow.  Stay warm, wrap up and hold those whom you love. 

Sunday Sunlight

...radiates through stained glass and fills the church.

...bends through the window in my truck and displays a spectrum of colors on the back of my hand.

...turns the woods behind the house from gray to shimmers of brown and gold.

...sneaks through the windows of the shop and highlights flecks of oak and poplar, some twirling, others silent and hanging motionless.

...warms my face as I lean into it from the shavehorse; no clouds yet.  It has been a wondrous day.

150 Candles for Kansas!

So my wife asked me today if I thought I'd be around for Kansas' 200th.  Not sure about that one, but my state's birthday was a memorable one weatherwise.  As we arrived home from a dinner for my son-in-law half an hour ago, I noticed that the temperature had dropped thirty degrees from when we had entered the dining establishment.  Wow!  A thirty degree drop in a little over two hours!  Ah, Kansas!

Those of us who are purebreds understand the weather here - it's always about to be the same as it was yesterday and tomorrow it's not likely to be what it is today.  What a fickle strip of territory I live in.  The belt buckle of the Midwest and known mostly by travelers as the part of the trip to simply get through, so they drive it at night!  But those of us who know are glad to be where we are in this state.  Kansas is just too vast for most folks, so they miss the smaller details that are the beauty of Kansas.  Happy Birthday, Kansas!  If I happen to be here for your 200th, would you give me another 68 degree day?

The Man Who "Lost" Thursday

Chesterton's story (parodied somewhat in the above title) has not only been a refreshing read, but also it serves well as my allusory excuse for missing yesterday's post.  Gabriel Syme's confusion and paranoia from the stalking Professor Worms around chapter five allows me to consider how this past week, the week in which I'm soon to see my son-in-law leave for a year, has seemed a sudden rush into new and often perplexing situations. 

Perhaps it's also the weather.  Today we're to near record highs, but by tomorrow temperatures are expected to drop once again.  And we're to have snow by Monday into Tuesday!  That's been past few days.  Oh, it's not my mood or general disposition; I've enjoyed the start of classes once again, and I've been progressing on a number of projects.  No, it's been the keen awareness that something is just waiting to change direction on me, and I know it's coming. 

Truly the anarchist is time itself.  There's no governing the ticking of the clock: it simply ticks, and we're swept along in the arc field of the pendulum. 

 

A Visit to "Dobby's"

Okay, so he's not the tallest pole in the fence row; he's one of my best friends, he's a very, very skilled craftsman, and, uh...he's got a bandsaw that works!  Mine ist kaput!  I know the bushings are shot and drive is starting to occasionally seize; hey, it's a nine-inch bench top model and it's lasted me over ten years!  It died with dignity!

So I mentioned that Dobby, actually his name is Paul, is quite the gifted talent with wood, metal, and clocks.  Yes, clocks.  Walking into Paul's shop is stepping back many years to "ye old clock shop." He's either fixing, restoring, or making clocks.  A carpenter by trade and passion, he's been a supervisor for several years and is on the verge of retirement.  How ironic that at the point he wouldn't need to worry about time, he's spending time with it! 

I look forward to seeing him in his shop.  There we'll follow a strict protocol:  there will be hellos followed by the latest joke, we'll sit and perhaps smoke our pipes complaining about and discussing the weather, I'll find his latest project and he'll make a small smile through his thick, smoke-stained moustache saying "watch this!"

At some point I'll get around to cutting the long curve on the two arms of my Morris chair project (maybe two minutes worth of work), and I'll leave an hour later knowing time is in good hands.

This Neck of the Woods

keeps a shadow on the creek
even at noon when each tree
loses sight of its height, the distance
the trees use to cast the fortunes
found deep in their rings.  Even,

here there are faces formed in the bark,
marble-like, half released then
buried in a dark canker, broken branch
splintered with the ache of a compound
fracture and still.  Frowns form over years

here; faces of drought and plenty, of winds
that pull like Furies, of a reluctant axe, of fledglings
who have failed in first flight. I see their eyes on me,
singular, silent in this cold as they wait
for me to fix a point, to get my bearings, to see just what side
of the tree on which to find the moss. 

*******

Just a quick, over-alliterated draft defining how cold I've felt the past few days. 

Warm Enough For a Run?

...well, at first I thought so.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to get out and run with Chloe on our lake path.  I'm just not the fan of cold weather like I used to be.  I used to camp in this weather!  In 1978, three of us camped over night at our favorite place, the "gulch" as we used to call it, when the wind chill reached -20 degrees!  We were safe in a wind break and had goose down bags, but it was chilly! 

The weather now just makes me ache (probably due to my younger escapades!), and I don't have much fun when the wind's blowing in my face.  Chloe wouldn't care how cold it is; her coat's so thick right now that I comb her at least once a week. 

So we went out this afternoon to find our form.  The thermometer read 45 degrees, the wind wasn't too strong, and there was a hint of sun through hazy clouds.  What moisture we had had wasn't apparent; the road way was dry, and we set out at our usual pace.  I turned on my Ipod and began to find a rhythm to my stride with my "Twenty Minute Run" playlist - some Radiohead, an upbeat Dave Matthews song, and I was just feeling good when RATM's "Sleep Now In The Fire" began and we'd reached our turnaround point...uh, then we turned into the wind.  Yikes!  What had happened?  Where were these gusts coming from?  And where were all of the nooks and crannies in my clothing into which the wind was sneaking coldly?

I looked at Chloe and told her we were walking it in.  I pulled my hood up tightly around my face, lowered my head while the wind dampened the music in my head.

First Week In Review

I've noticed a couple of interesting things in my classes over the past year.  I'm beginning to believe that technology has become somewhat mundane to my students.  In four classes, I've not had one student who's been "texting" while I was either lecturing, leading some discussion, or engaging them in some activity of their own. I'm sure it's not to last; I'm sure that once my composition class housed in one of our computer labs becomes accustomed to the computers that I'll see them on Facebook, any number of search engines, or trying to download something illegally.

But this past year I've seen a decline with the temptation of technology.  It's as if there is so much technology with which students become redundantly bored that they find themselves in a kind of stasis.   With a phone, computer, some kind of digital music device it seems students are overloaded with what to do.  So they do nothing. 

Ah ha!  Now's my chance.  I often like to suggest to students that they try to match what they want in technology with what they can do by themselves.  Write a letter, go see someone and have a conversation, whistle a tune, or even hand write what they've done that day.  It's fascinating to me  how "in touch" people want to be and how "out of touch" they are with themselves.  We need sense and feeling, smell and touch.  I prefer a handshake to an email any day, and I'd prefer it even more after an absence of time.  Perhaps Nature wanted us to sense the awareness of detachment from one another; it makes the moments we do have with each other so much more real. 

Secondly, I believe the days of men wearing their pants lower than their underwear as if they are about to drop in front of us in on the wane.  Huzzah! I see fewer and fewer samples of this on campus.  What will the branders of boxer shorts ever do now?

Translucent

Some things can only be seen to truly be appreciated.  I'm not sure what species of wood I like working by hand the best, but oak would have to be in the top three.  My least favorite would have to be cottonwood.  It's a most horrible wood to try and use a drawknife and not find the grain completely opposite halfway through.  Even with the sharpest spokeshave, I've never been able to produce and glass-like finish.

Walnut is hard to manipulate at times, but it's my favorite wood on which to use my chisels.  Scores well, keeps a consistent grain, and the shavings just curl into small ringlets, even on a crosscut, with a sharpened chisel.  Poplar is a fun, softer wood to work with, and its coloring is among my favorites when it has a hand-rubbed coat of boiled linseed oil.

No; oak, and preferably white oak is such fun to work.  Now, my "project," which R.S. has just about figured out, is mostly red oak, but even red oak offers some wonderful surprises.

Above is a pic of a "leg." Nothing's glued or fastened; it's as I said yesterday - mortise and tenon work is just assembly - like Lego's for grown ups!  What I'd focus your attention on is the vertical piece that looks rather spalted.  It's what's known as "quartersawn" lumber.  In oak, one can end up with what looks like these three-dimensional facets in the wood.  It's what most people like about oak.  White oak is well known for this in quartersawn dimensions, but it occurs in the red oak variety as well.  There is a beauty even to the unfinished wood. But look below...

Nothing's been finished sanded; I just wiped a bit of danish oil on the face of the leg.  Wow!  Amazing colors, no? When it's sanded smooth, oiled, waxed, and buffed, the wood will literally glow!  So have you figured it out?  I'm not one for stretching out the obvious, but here's one more image from today's work in the shop to help you along.

Here's my favorite corner of my little workshop - my workbench!  R.S. is thinking a bit too large, but I'd like to tackle a daybed in the mission style at some point in the future.

It's a good day when I have some time in the shop.

The Project

Now for something a bit different. 

I am a dabbler in things that I find interesting.  Okay, maybe I get a bit extreme at times...my wife would call it an obsession. Once a friend asked me if I had ever made a saddle; I said, no, but it does sound interesting. I ended up making seven in an eighteen month period. 

Woodworking is an activity that I've enjoyed for many years.  Just learning about how to use the various tools that belonged to my father and grandfather, learning the character and attitude of various wood species, and, of course, making multiple mistakes (not keeping my tools sharp enough!); it's as fun as making a dining room-sized harvest trestle table for a neighbor (another one of those "have you ever made" kind of situations).  I'm always finding some project that looks...interesting.

Here's the latest...

I'm not sure I want to give it away with this post; it might be fun to see if someone can determine what it's going to be.  Clue one:  it's going to give me time to consider turning 50!

Nothing yet?  This image shows the product of a fun couple of afternoons.  These "pieces" of 5/4 oak have been steam bent.  I built a steam box and let them steam nicely for two and a half hours; they bent to nine degrees easily and are here "resting" for the next step.  (The date on the picture isn't meant to throw you; it's just inaccurate, and I can't figure out how to change it.)  Okay, one more.

Working wood is a love affair with patience.  These are thirty-six of the mortise and tenon joints that go into the final product.  It's not my favorite joint (that would be the dovetail), but once they're completed it's all a game of assembly!

I'll be interspersing some updates of the "project" over the next couple of weeks.  Can you figure it out?

In a Hurrying Light

A full day of work discussing types of arguments - deliberative, forensic, and ceremonial- then off to the bowling alley to watch my daughter role a 503 series as a freshman.  She's picked this game up well.  I don't bowl well, but I like to bowl especially with my wife.  We have fun; it's what sports are for me anymore - fun.  Buy my daughter has a style similar to my youngest son who is an amazing bowler.  I never saw my father bowl, but my mother says my son bowls just like my father.  What a gift.  I see my father as I watch my son. 

Arrive at home and check the progress of the beaver while Chloe, my spaniel, romps in the damp, but still frozen yard.  Fresh chips around the tree, but I believe the cold has kept "Billy," the name I've given the beaver, snuggled in his den somewhere.  He's a smart one that Billy. 

In ten minutes we leave to go watch my oldest son play basketball and Newman University.  He's a senior; I've watched him play basketball since he was in third grade, and I will miss watching this most graceful time of his athletic career.  Each second he's in the game is bliss for me; basketball is such a flowing, graceful sport, and he's very good at what he does. 

My life seems busy, but there are moments when time slows and these images appear that I know I can hold forever. 

Twice-read letters

In between classes today, I've been thumbing through a copy of Seneca's Letters From A Stoic that I bought in 1982 for $2.95 at the Wichita State University bookstore for one of my Latin classes with Dr. Kehoe.  What?  Why delve into a musty paperback with your new technology, sir?  Considering that my reading habit has turned to the Kindle and the "etext" as of late, I want to keep in practice with a "hands on" approach.  Best, I get to find the little berries of fruit from my earlier educational experience of marking and highlighting books that I read twenty to thirty years ago. 

Yes, I understand the Kindle offers a highlighting feature; however, there is no substitute for the yellowed, yellow glare of the highlighted passage to make one pause and consider:  Why did I underline that?

I offer a few of my earlier "recognitions of words important" at such time that I should consider them passages.

from Letter LXXVIII...
(Seneca quoting Posidonius...) "'In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.'  In the meantime cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.  Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."

from Letter III...
"...people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval - the former as much as the latter.  For a delight in bustling about is not industry - it is only the restless enerby of a hunted mind.  And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.  This prompts me to memorize something which I came across in Pomponius. 'Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them.'  A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action.  Ask nature:  she will tell you that she made both day and night."

Ah, my Latin comes back a bit...aurea mediocritas

Finally, from Letter VII...
"Retire into yourself as much as you can.  Associate with people who are likely to improve you.  Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one:  men learn as they teach.  And there is no reason why any pride in advertising your talents abroad should lure you forward into the public eye, inducing you to give readings of your works or deliver lectures.  I should be glad to see you doing that if what you had to offer them was suitable for the crowd I have been talking about: but the fact is, not one of them is really capable of understanding you."

Brevity, levity, & civility.  Let it snow; the sun shines today!

Hello Class, Welcome to ...

After a week of educational meetings, filled often with the redundant verbiage of academic policies, pessimistic reports about the college's economics - the "business" of education - which garners very little hope towards any substantial advancement in salaries, and the common office time for syllabi production, copying of handouts, and arranging for classrooms, classes have finally begun!

This won't be a homily of how little instructors are paid (although considering the recent increases in enrollment that, in our small way, the faculty have contributed to - in any other business - we'd be in a bull market!), no, I'm more concerned with how wonderful it feels to be back in the classroom.  It is the first day that's always filled with a great deal of hope.  Students are interested; they're lively and attentive, and they look through the syllabus with both trepidation and excitement.

There have been very, very few semesters in which I've found myself concerned about the prospect of the following fifteen to sixteen weeks; indeed, most are often very promising.  This semester looks to be on par with the latter.

 I have a great job:  I meet and get to know 125 new people every semester!  I stopped counting how many people that must be over twenty six years of teaching, or how many credit hours that is (how much money have I brought to the institution?), or just how many times I've spoken of Hamlet's melancholy...no, all of that is pointless.  It's for retirement speeches and dinners which call an end to one's career.

I look forward to each first day for the very reason that it's a first day!  Education, learning itself should be a first day; each credit hour, each course, each moment, for teacher and student - it sparks the beginning.

On a theme from Yeats

I have always been in awe of how much change my grandparents experienced.  I like telling my students of my grandfather who finished school in eighth grade, went to a technical college to learn telegraphy, worked in 26 towns in Kansas (mostly walking to work each day), drove a horse and buggy, rode trains, drove a car, watched a man walk on the moon, bore witness to four wars, and, most interestingly, had his mother-in-law living with his wife and three daughters for over forty years! He was a stoic man when I was old enough to understand him.  There wasn't too much that threw him off even keel.  He kept things simple and rarely strayed from his pattern. 

But that was normal for my family.  It was normal for me to hear the German language around my grandparents' house coming from both my grandparents and my great-grandmother who spoke very little English that I remember.  She did read to us grandkids.  Felix the Cat is the book I best remember hearing her reading us in perfect English with a very thick, German accent.  She and my grandparents never spoke sharply to us or about us...at least never in English! 

And that was normal for my family.  A family "get-together" meant just that:  all the family including aunts, uncles, cousins, and often my parents' cousins whom we were always instructed to call "Aunt" or "Uncle." We ate, watched the adults smoke and drink, mostly beer and drinks that smelled of cola and alcohol; we kids would find an empty room and play hide the thimble - there was nothing else to do at my grandparents house - or, if at a cousin's house, the boys and girls would divide up into two bedrooms, the girls listening to Beatles' albums, the boys discussing hunting, drinking, or dirty jokes. 

That was normal.  Not a lot changed early in my life. 

Now, nearing 50, I see why my grandfather enjoyed the patient pace to his life.  I miss my sisters nagging me about being on the phone when they wanted to call their "boyfriends" and talk quietly in the kitchen so mom and dad wouldn't hear too much.  I miss dialing, not pushing the keypad, but dialing.  Now each of my children have a phone number and a phone.  It's as if we live in completely different places.  When my family gets together, everyone holds his phone at the ready as if the next call or text will mean a prize or something splendid.  I see a world of people waiting, expectantly holding the phone in place to connect with...the next caller? a text? an update? 

And this is normal for my world. 

I believe my grandfather had it correct; just stay the course, there's enough going on around me already.

The Space(s) Between

I've been reading through some of my old journals.  This is a selection from Wednesday 13 February, 1991.

"'The Incas of the 14th century in Peru used a device called a "Quipu" (pronounced Kee-poo).  The Quipu was used by runners who carried mesages from village to village concerning the trade of livestock, good, birth, deaths, and other such information.  This device was simply a colored length of rope with a series of knots in it.  Each knot, depending on its shape and position along the rope, enabled the runner to recall informationi such as who sent the messages, the subject of the message, and the number of items involved.'

------

And here's the knot of love, dyed
red with the color of first passion.

------

Quipu

The messengers assemble on the porch
and blush briefly.  Some are sweating
like a horse having just run a Pony Express route,
others are quite, stifling some smiles
they will use at the appropriate moment
in the future after they have made a face
go white or red - the color of recognition.

They all read the colors.

The ropes, you see, it's all in the ropes.
Here, let me show you.
This one, the yellow - this means
it's Thursday, a child
was born on Tuesday, next door
a death on Wednesday
of an old one, female, the child
was female, too, see the knots touch,
and all are fine and healthy.

------

The muscle of wheat ripples in wind.

For every crow in the yard there is a cavern in the heart of a loved one.

------

Our history.
Light poles up and down the street - Kansas'
state tree - measure a kiss we share.  Tongues speak
of later.  I drive, one eye arched to the periphery." 

I find little more satisfying than writing in my journal each day. 

eReading Day

I'm assembling a new library.  It's full of books, many that I've read several times, many that are new, and many I could neither find nor afford.  And, yes, my wife won't complain that I'm adding even more to the already full shelves of books that I do have a home and in my office at school; it's all part of my new Kindle.  What fun I've had browsing up and down the virtual library shelves simply looking at books.  It's all very seductive.  But will I want to give up the physical turning of the page?

More to come later.

Doppler Effects

It was twenty-two months that my father was gone for his stint in the Navy - 1943 to 1945 in the South Pacific.  He was seventeen; he had to have his father sign his enlistment papers for him, and when he finally shipped out, he ended up on an island somewhere in the South Pacific.  It took him a month to finally know the actual name of the island...my mother, his girl back home, never knew.

But she wrote him everyday.  Often he would write her when the opportunity arose or they were ordered to do so.  My sisters and I had their letters, many of the lines blacked out by the military censors.  The paper seemed old to us, but the message was as clear as today with my daughter and her husband who will be shipping out at the end of this month for a year with his Army unit:  they loved each other.  We lost those letters from mildew.

I think they're both beginning to anticipate being apart - hiding it through their courage and the usual responses that couples are supposed to give people when asked if they're alright.  But there will be an absence.  My daughter and my mother spoke last week about what will soon be a shared experience between generations of women who have given up those whom they love in order for them to serve their country.  I don't know the worry that my mother must have felt when for twenty-two months she had no idea how her boyfriend was doing; I do know that my mother never lost faith that he would be back.

I'm glad that my daughter knows where her husband will be going and that she will be able to communicate with him just about everyday - there is a bright blossom in the garden of technology - but I know that like my mother her nights will seem  a bit empty...until like a lone car driving towards her on a highway, the sound of his approach will be ever increasing.  Good luck C; we love you and will miss you.

In The Company of Scholars

Tonight was our bi-annual "mega" meeting of all English faculty at our school.  We have a loyal, decent core of instructors who venture out each semester to listen to a redundant set of messages I deliver, mixed with a bit of variety.  I fret a bit each semester wondering how to make the meeting meaningful, and, above all, useful, so instructors can walk into the semester feeling somewhat rejuvenated about what they do. 

Last Fall we had the author of one of our common texts come and speak to us.  It was, at the time, one of our best meetings.  People were engaged with the author, the material was timely and interesting, there were great questions and discussion about curriculum and pedagogy...people left me comments for a week about how uplifting the meeting was. 

This evening was my time to feel that the elements all came together and synthesized into a truly meaningful event.  No author this time; just each other.  Peers took the lead; material clicked with the audience.  I didn't feel like I needed to lead anything; it was a time to listen and absorb. 

I want you to know this.  I work with very great, talented people.  I often wonder how I'm in the position I am because there is a brilliance that shines from these teachers...I hope I'm still emitting.

Great job folks!  I am humbled and honored to be in your company.

That's Hat

Morning temperature -5 degrees.  Daytime high 18 degrees.  What a perfect day for a hat!

We lost something both in practicality and style in the late 20th century - men wearing hats as a common accessory!  I've always admired them - seeing old pictures of my father and grandfathers wearing derbies and fedoras - and longed to feel "adult" enough to wear one and feel comfortable in public.  A few years ago I guess I felt that I had reached that "adult" threshold and purchased a proper fedora from my good friends at Hatman Jack's in Wichita.  Jack Kellogg has, by far, the best selection of wool to top one's head in the region, and he's a master when it comes to selecting and shaping.

The best hat isn't the hat that looks like someone's...it's yours.  When a man wears a hat, it becomes who he is.  Mine, a beaver felt fedora, has found my head's shape and has become "my" hat.  It fits as soon as I put it on...no tweaking it atop my head to find a comfortable landing spot, and it stays on even in a strong Kansas wind gust.

Wearing my bow ties at school I get the occasional strange glance and behind the back comment, but couple the tie and the fedora and I'm suddenly enigmatic to many.  But on a day like today, certainly I'm not such a pariah.  In fact, two good friends made the comment that they wish they had a hat to put on in such cold weather.

The wearer of hats is not the reactive type...he's a proactive symbol of style!  Keep your head warm!

"A Trained Mind..."

"...is a mind that can listen to me for three minutes without yawning."  William Allen White

Known mostly for his name attached to an annual listing of books for children, White was more a fascinating man of politics, both domestic and international, causes, and, best of all, the editorial desk.  When I graduated high school in 1979, my uncle's sister, her name was Vera Clark, gifted me with to books from her library collection.  The Selected Letters of William Allen White  and The Autobiography of William Allen White. Both first editions, I was immensely thankful to her...I remember the exchange quite well. She gave me the books wrapped very simply in plain, brown paper saying, "I hope you enjoy these," she told me. There were clippings and Emporia Chamber of Commerce brochures honoring Emporia's golden boy, reprinted articles discussing his courtship letters and why writers should avoid slang (the back side of which advertising all you can eat chicken livers for $2.50 at the Holiday Inn on West 18th street), and a few hand-written notes of marginalia. 

I didn't read the books for three years.  I began college with an emphasis in pre-Med and believed I needed to focus on Math and Chemistry, my weaknesses.  It was only when I had changed my major to English that the books resurfaced on my own shelves.  It was when I read them that I realized how writing could influence a person's life.  White's opus of writing had had great influence from his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt; it was Roosevelt's policies when he ran for Presiden that, as White said, "gave color to my writings, and formed the policy of the Gazette." 

From that point on, White became very prolific, became the target of a D.A.R blacklist for his liberal progressive views (they believed him to be a communist though he detested the communist party), and even became the recipient of a Pulitzer.  When a Mr. Kloos wrote White commenting graciously on his editorial "What's The Matter With Kansas," White wrote the following response:

Dear Mr. Kloos: 
I thank you most kindly for your interest in my work.  I am sending you some material herewith.  You ask me to what I attribute my success.  The answer is I haven't had a success.  I have lived happily because I have been busy and never have been bored a minute or out of a job.  And for the same reason, I don't have any hobbies.  I touch life at many points: in business, in editing, in writing books, on the political side, on music, and a happy family.  You ask in what sports I am most interested.  I never saw a basketball game.  I haven't seen a baseball game for forty years.  I don't like football.  I am but a poor and fumbling pallbearer.  I don't know how to play bridge.  I don't know how to bowl.  But I am the rocking chair champion of the Emporia Country Club.  And that's all...

That letter was dated April 16, 1940, and later that year, White had become frustrated with how complacent the American public had become regarding the war in Europe.  In that same month Germany invaded both Norway and Denmark and people were finally beginning to sense Hitler's real plan to conquer what White considered was "aimed at the heart of the human spirit."

Perhaps it's time to go back and reread my two White books, gifts from a very progressive thinking Aunt Vera, a teacher herself who began in a one-room school house and ended in the Teacher's Hall of Fame.

"Make your words dance..."

First Snow Coats Our Small World

This is one of my favorite pictures. It's of Molly, our English Springer Spaniel, whom we had to put down at two years-old from a tumor in her liver.  She loved the snow!  This picture was of her first time in snow.  It wasn't a heavy snow, two to three inches at most, but she felt right at home from her first frolic.  Chloe, our new Springer, has had a couple of years in the snow, and, much like Molly did, she loves to run, jump, burrow, and roll in the snow.  I just don't have any pictures of Chloe in the snow! My wife took this picture; it made the local television news as a picture of the day.  She comes from a family of photographers.  Both her father and brother have a great eye for the world, but I believe my wife occasionally gives them some valid competition. 

**********

Nothing can match the quiet of snow fall, but once it's stopped you can hear everything around you more clearly. 

**********

Favorite snow poem:  "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

**********

Two snow memories:  watching a calf being born; my first child making her first snow angel.

Steady Gets The Job Done

For the past several weeks there has been a beaver nightly gnawing away at a hackberry tree on the bank across the creek behind our house.  Most nights, when I let out Chloe, my English Springer, to run around for a final pit stop before bed, I can hear the beaver rustling through the dry scrub and dead limbs.  From the back of the house I can see where it's worn a slide sloping down the bank (the creek is down greatly...we've had very little rain the past few months).  A hundred yards up creek the reason behind his work is evident.  There is a dam that spans the width of the creek, but it's holding very little water with the water flow no more than eight or ten feet wide.  Perhaps it's expecting, in some knowing way, the weather to change.  For the creek to begin to fill.  Maybe the beaver is simply doing what is likes to do.  Maybe it's the natural imprint of nature operating in my back yard.

Then last week it chased my son one night when he decided it would be fun to try and get close to it and throw a rock to scare it.  I don't know that beaver get scared; perhaps annoyed, but this one was obviously mad because it charged my son who did the right thing and backed off.  After his telling me of this nocturnal stand off, it made consider this particular beaver more closely.

The hackberry, which is by no means a sapling, began to show signs of more attention.  I thought first an accomplice, but this beaver is a loner.  I've seen the tracks around the tree and at the top of the slide, but they indicate only one.  This beaver had a real stake in this tree.  Having seen its dam, I wasn't sure how a twelve inch diameter hackberry would benefit him at this point, and I wasn't sure how he would ever drag it up to the dam's location.  At his current rate, given whatever similar projects he may have going, I believe he'll be through the tree in another week.

I admire this patience and his ethic towards his work.  Oh I know there's a physiological purpose to his chewing, but perhaps it's something more than his teeth he needs to keep trimmed.  Perhaps it's an inherent challenge with wood, the fiber both nourishment and job satisfaction.  We'll see what the new work week will bring...

Having Just Settled In...

...for a long winter's nap is the line from Clement Moore's holiday poem my wife and kids quote to me in jest now, yet I find nothing stodgy or frumpy about wearing a nightcap to bed.  It's a linen nightcap I made by hand several years ago to wear at reenactment events when the evening air would become frosty - I hate when my head gets cold! It also served as a wonderful insect screen when the nights weren't so cold but they were laden with the buzzing sounds of mosquitos.  It isn't so much my age that I wear it now, nor the fact that my mind has always been tuned to a 19th century frequency and I like the style; it's honestly a fan...Vornado to be exact.  For the years we've been married, my wife and I fall to sleep with the sounds and (in her case) the breezes from a fan. 

But I've never been a fan of drafts, breezes, or hot breath blowing around my head and face as I try to fall to sleep; no, it's that exact interference that, in my opinion, leads to bad dreams and an even worse time trying to wake in the morning.  So I've taken to wearing a nightcap while the weather's been cool and everything else save my head is securely tucked under crisp sheets, woolen blankets, and a down comforter on these winter nights. 

Indeed I've discovered something about wearing a nightcap - something that save only a few nightcap-donners would know.  I fall to sleep more quickly (probably the lack of breeze instrusion), sleep more soundly, and my dreams...heavens, since wearing the nightcap I've been having multi-chaptered dreams full of vivid colors with story lines of which when I wake I readily remember large moments.  Is it the nightcap, or am I just in a period of better sleeping?

My usual night is a wrestling match of random thoughts for at least twenty minutes or until my mind is simply pinned by exhaustion.  With the nightcap, it's as if the world, like the obstinate mosquito, is blocked and I can peacefully and quickly "settle in" to a warm, less breezy, night of sleep. 

Coming January 8th!

On the 8th of January, I'll begin the countdown to my 50th birthday.  Truly, it's no mid-life crisis.  I experienced that (the physical and emotional struggles) since five years ago when my father died.  No, I look at 50 as a completely new set of opportunities.  One of those opportunities is this blog.  It's a new arena for me...all of this electronic socialization.  My group of close friends with whom I often detail a few of my life's thoughts and actions has always been (and will continue to be) small and intimate, but as a teacher I feel I have acquired a relationship with many people with whom I would count myself a friend.  In part, this set of ramblings is for them as both a promise fulfilled and a challenge for them to learn even more about the absolute wonder of language and how we communicate and express with it. Yet, I not here as a lecturer...God, forbid those who've been in my class need less of that...no, I'm hoping to clarify.  Reaching the age of 50 soon, I make no claim as to having either the capacity or knowledge of prophecy or of perfect experience (I am not the role model), but I've learned that the shared experiences of human life, though seemingly insignificant to most, yield beautiful moments that remind us of who we are and what matters.  Humbly I offer a few of mine and look forward hearing of yours.