In Which We Celebrate, For Things Do Get Better

Oh Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay! Today NEO is basking in the sunshiny Upper Forties and the huge icicles have departed my gutters (or eavestroughs, as some locals here still insist upon calling them). I have seen wee margins of grass here and there as the monoliths of snow pull away from the sidewalks and driveways heated from the sun. And, quite importantly, today I wore only my lined raincoat to the grocery store.

So many lovely, lovely things are making me happy right now, and it seems like So Very Long since something has, so I would like to share.

My Latest Happies

1. My hair
2. Our Canada jaunt
3. The weather
4. President Obama's "Bloody Sunday" speech
5. A license plate I saw

Let me just tell you about those, and then you can chat about your Latest Happies in Comments.

1. My Hair is a constant barometer of my wellbeing. Last year, I decided to join the Pixie Movement (albeit late) and I was alternately pleased and horrified. Very sensibly, my friend Shirley over at gfeeasily said, "I think people are either Long Hair People or Short Hair People and just aren't happy being the other one." Well, my friends, I am a Long Hair Person. Period. My hair is finally grown out to a point where it is manageable and I no longer cry every other day because I Just Don't Know What To Do With It Anymore. The next time I say One Word about getting a haircut, I want every single person in the world to smack me hard. Thank you in advance.

2. Rick and I both knew we needed a change of scenery and that, despite the weather being identical to ours, the wine and comforts of Niagara-on-the-Lake would help us tremendously. So true. We had a lovely time this past weekend and brought home just under four cases, one being a gorgeous buttery Chardonnay. Our innkeepers took us as their guests to a winery party, and we had a very good time with tank tastings and nibblies. We even visited the newest winery, just opened, and because it is such a slow time, got a private tour. While in Canada, we politely asked that they keep their weather to themselves, and they said they would try.

3. What a lift to have temperatures higher than the single digits and teens! We are seeing the forties and maybe even a fifty or two in the next week or so. And sun...its effect on my mood and energy is incalculable. I know from living in NEO my whole life that this is merely a break in the action: our winter is far from over. But if we could get a full thaw and have all the snow gone, that would be terrific. I'm anxious to get back down to the lake and see how things are doing. It cannot be lake season soon enough for me.

4. I was in Canada for President Obama's delivery of his speech at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma. When I got home, I had the full text in my inbox, and I read it. I did not get far before my eyes were full of tears. I am always happy when words can move me, and I am always happy when our President makes reference to great writers and great women. I burst into tears especially when he called on the great Walt Whitman, the chronicler of the American Journey, and paraphrased a line that I so often spoke in awe in my own classroom. "I am large, I contain multitudes." Politics aside, it is a beautiful speech. Please click here and read it in full. (Note: Time magazine's transcript is NOT the full transcript, their claim to the contrary.)

5. On our way home yesterday we drove through Cleveland, and I caught a glimpse of a license plate framed by rainbow-coloured peace signs. It read GETZBTR. All I could see of its male driver was a pale hand and sunglasses as we raced past the frozen lake headed into downtown. I hope that the license plate meant GETS BETTER, and that it was part of the campaign IT GETS BETTER, which was started to give hope to LGBT youth. Vanity plates cost extra and have to be renewed every year, so it would be a personal expense if he were spreading that message. I choose to think that he was. Cleveland hosted the Gay Games last year, and they were a rousing success. Ohio is still a DOMA state, and the governor and legislature are republicans. One look at Ohio's district map shows you how horribly gerrymandered it is, but attitudes are changing. The DOMA was voted by the citizenry, true, but so much outside money influenced it that it was criminal. But that license plate...my heart lightened instantly.

What has lightened your heart lately? Tell us and make us all smile.

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In Which I Kick Off Dept. Of Nance Poetry Month And Discover Another Good Thing About NEO

June has arrived and with it, Dept. of Nance Poetry Month. It's the First Ever, so who knows how things will transpire? Let's get right to it, Readers Mine, and celebrate!

Our first offering is by a poet who comes from Maple Heights, Ohio, a city not too terribly far from where I
live in NEO. She studied at Ohio State and Vassar, and later lived as a companion to Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister in the famous poet's home for several years. Quietly and persistently, she became well-known, reading her poems in almost every single state and earning honors and awards for her verse. This remarkable voice can count among her accolades a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and several honorary doctorates. I will be forever in fellow blog writer Rose's debt for introducing me to the work of Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I wonder if there isn't a bit of the Buddhist in Mary Oliver; her nature poems remind me of Walt Whitman's, but are more spiritual and less Nineteenth Century Hippie. She has hundreds more that are better, more breathtaking, and better examples of her astonishing craftsmanship, but this particular poem was like a little bit of therapy for me this morning. Yesterday had been a lousy day for a lot of reasons, and I awoke today with a migraine in a stuffy bedroom. The air was heavy and humid, and my sleep had been hard-fought. My hands were swollen from arthritis; the rest of me was puffy from my new migraine medicine. Not only is my new medicine apparently not working, but it has also made me gain weight--and noticeably, (thanks for mentioning it, Mr. LandscaperFriend, and loudly, too, in the middle of The Garden Center). In short, I was feeling Really Sorry For Myself.

Enter Mary Oliver and Wild Geese. "You do not have to be good," she tells me, and that first sentence is so comforting, such a balm to my wounded psyche, that tears well up in my eyes. I don't have to be a martyr, a penitent, a saint, an ideal. My relief is almost cathartic.

"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." How much I needed this reminder! My problems are just that--mine. My troubles would be trivial to people who awoke this morning in a foreclosed home, awoke in a hospital, awoke worrying about a parent in a nursing home, awoke to ready a special needs child for camp. There is despair, then there is my version of it, then there is someone else's. That comma, then the word "yours" is huge--parenthetical, really.

"Meanwhile the world goes on." While this might sound like "suck it up", the examples that Mary Oliver provides are rejuvenating and encouraging. Sun and rain move across the land, and the earth continues its cycle of life. Wild geese rise in the sky and return home.

What I love about the last five lines of this poem is that she anticipates the reader's evolution of emotions. He or she enters the poem feeling sad and alone with her despair. She wants to share her burdens, and then realizes that not only does everyone have troubles, but that hers are not as serious as she first believed. The reader understands that the world still moves on, no matter how sad or despondent she may feel. But, rather than feel isolated and alone by that fact, she should instead feel that the natural world is calling to her, reminding her that she is part of it.

Both Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman see Nature as our source and comfort. They seem to think that denying Nature is to deny our nature. This admonition always makes me think of the Puritans; they tried to curb, deny, or downright outlaw every natural human instinct or proclivity or, at the very least, force it into some unnatural constraint. The Puritans had a healthy respect for nature itself, but they didn't revere or celebrate it. That would have been a Sin. They could have used a little bit of Mary Oliver.

Speaking of which, here she is, reading Wild Geese.


photo credit

O Me! O Life! O Well! How Apple Reminded Me To Celebrate Myself And Sing Myself And, Belatedly, Some Poetry

Today I realized that April is National Poetry Month, and that I had missed it entirely. Worse than that,even, I couldn't recall if I had bothered to mention or commemorate it last year or, heaven help me, the year before. I have turned into a terrible excuse for a lover of les belles-lettres.

The catalyst for all of my self-loathing was Apple re-airing their commercial in which Robin Williams reads a fragment of Walt Whitman's poem 166. O Me! O Life!. (The voice-over is actually from Williams' role in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society.) In the narration Williams' character is earnest and energized. He quotes loosely from the poem, but leans heavily upon the last stanza, which Whitman has subtitled Answer. It is this stanza which offers the sweeping last line with the lilting cadence. The first stanza, which doesn't get into that ad, is quite different. It is plaintive and despondent. It trudges and stomps along heavily and resignedly. It is downtrodden and sad. I love this poem. It reminds us of our place in the chaos and the teeming crowds. It soothes our despair. It answers our wailing question, "Why, oh why am I here?"

166. O Me! O Life!

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;                  
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.


Whitman wanted so much to be the voice of America's Journey. I read him and I get tears in my eyes. His feeling is so profound, whether it is joy or love or pain. It will comfort me always to read his promise in Song of Myself #52: "Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,/Missing me one place search another,/I stop somewhere waiting for you."

And he does.  This morning in my Plain Dealer, I saw this--

FRAZZ  by Jef Mallett

--and I smiled.  O Me! O Walt! O Life!

I am giving some serious thought to declaring the month of June "Dept. of Nance Poetry Month." Each week, I'll toss up a poem by a different poet and chat about it, then invite you to comment and share your own favourites. Perhaps those among you with your own sites might like to join in. Tell me your thoughts on this proposition and Walt Whitman's poem in Comments. Or talk to me about poetry, poems, a poet/poets or a favourite poem or poet. It all sounds lovely to me.

On Thinking And Teaching And Retiring

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me that I think too much.  While I'm not sure what would prompt that admonition, I do know that it continued long into my teen years. 

These days, when the weather here in NEO has turned cooler, greyer, and wetter, I am prone to introspection.  My tendency is also to cocoon.  Piper and Marlowe don't do much to discourage this behaviour; they're drowsy and inclined to curl up on my lap or in their beds and only animate themselves if I am up and busy.  There is always a Project, or Light Domestic Goddessing, or Something To Do.  I have some writing jobs, paid and pro bono, the latter for charities and people I care about. When I do go out for errands, the cats are accusatory and reproachful upon my return.  Only when they see I am staying home for a while do they accept me back into their good graces.

I'm often asked if I have regrets about retiring.  The short answer is No.  My dear Aunt Shirley, herself a retired English teacher, counseled me way back in July to take a short trip the week school started.  "You'll need to be away," she said knowingly.  "Trust me. You don't think you'll miss it, but you will.  You need to be away when it starts back up so you won't feel strange."  Well, I didn't and I don't. I left at just the Right Time for me.

I am often asked if I miss Teaching--in my mind, a different question entirely.  The answer is very complicated, so I usually answer, "Oh, sometimes."  My teacher friends never ask me.  They already know. 

I do not miss the Not Teaching part:  incessant record keeping, phone calls home to parents of highschoolers, labyrinthine office procedures, unreliable copy machines, being informed that the internet is down via email, baffling administrative protocols, and the constant disrespect by government--and, oh hell, let's throw society in there, too--at every level. 

But every so often, I do miss the Teaching part.  I treasured being the Giver Of Literature to my students.  It was with true reverence that I gave them the work of Walt Whitman (America's first hippie); that I introduced them to the genius of Miss Emily (Dickinson).  Who else will enlist empathy and champions for poor, motherless (for all intents and purposes) Holden Caulfield? Who else will defend the honor of Edgar Allan Poe and beg the students to look, look deep into his eyes before they read his work, before they dismiss him as some drunk crazy who married his teenaged cousin?

And I miss working with Creative Writing students the most. Words and writing are my passion, and there was an electric satisfaction, a sort of inspirational symbiosis that occurred when I sat down in conference with my writers those many years.  I felt simultaneously rejuvenated and drained by them. It was a glorious paradox, and those decades were Golden Privilege.  This year, Creative Writing is not even offered, and it breaks my heart.

So much of Teaching--True Teaching--is a Gift. I have it, I gave it, and I got it in return.  Like many gifts, it wasn't always perfect, and there were times when I wondered if the recipients were deserving. But let's not belabor the metaphor.  Or...think too much about it.

Instead, I have a little jaunt to get ready for and some PR stuff to write.  And the head of cauliflower in the crisper won't clean, cut, season, and roast itself as part of tonight's dinner.  It might be a good idea to update our Cellar Inventory, too. Allow me a small indulgence:  to leave you with my good friend, Walt.

How Can This Be Only February? My Tragi-Meter Points To At Least Late March, And Self-Pity Springs Eternal

Sorry to take issue with T.S. Eliot, but I'm here--barely--to tell you that it's February that is the Cruellest Month. When the weather chick gets breathless announcing that we'll climb into the mid-twenties (!!), you know things have reached Maximum Suckage And Holding.

As a result, I'm scattered and fragmented and In The Slough Of Despair, and even Walt Whitman can't lift me this time. (Especially to hear him droned and desecrated by disengaged juniors who, unless Walt has, like, a MyTwitFace presence, really, like, has, like, nothing to say, like, what page is it on again?)

Yet, I press on. Allow me to shake loose a few clingy clutterbits from my random-bin, and we'll see if anything entertains.

+:+The snow, my lord, the snow. There was absolutely nowhere else to put it, and the driveway had two inches of ice on it. Yesterday, the temperature skyrocketed to almost 40, and I was able to go outside and actually look around a little before getting into the car, which prompted this dialogue as I walked near the side of the garage:
Rick: (nonchalantly) Oh, by the way. I hit the garage over there with the snowblower.
Nance: (surveys damaged area, eyes widening, mouth agape) Oh my god! Why...well...what on earth did you expect me to...do with this...information?
Rick: (calmly, not looking at her) Process it and try to move on. And when it gets nicer out, remind me to replace those pieces of siding.
Nance: (staring at him as if he just landed on the planet) What?! Are you...? Do we even have those pieces of the siding?
Rick: (already in the car) Of course.

+:+ Somehow, Piper and Marlowe are...well, fat. On just dry cat food and water. Do not laugh. I am beyond distraught about this, and I have put them on A Diet. I bought diet cat food, and I only feed them twice a day, the recommended amount each time. No table food, and the treats they get are only 2 calories each, and they do not get them every day. Needless to say, they are Very Unhappy, and Marlowe lets me know. Often. Equally distressing is our daily session of Forced Active Play. Piper's idea of playing is to lie there and watch Marlowe play. "Wow," he seems to be saying, "that is a lot of moving around that you are doing over there." He might roll over if a toy comes near him and then bat it with his paws, and sometimes he might stroll interestedly after the laser dot, but not much beyond that. Marlowe is much more athletic, which is due, in part, to her constant and flagrant disregard for the No Cats On Counters rule. And now that she is STARVING, she is up there all the time. A couple of days ago, my brain now turned to mush by School And Snow, The Deadly Combination, I uttered this memorable admonition to her when I found her hungrily scrounging in the (clean) kitchen sink:
"Marlowe! Look at you! Get out of that sink! What are you, some kind of animal?"

+:+ Speaking of felines, Sam's new kitten Madden may have been misnamed. Kaeleigh, Sam's girlfriend, brought up the login screen for her online class and then left her laptop on the table to go get something she forgot. When she came back, Madden was waiting for her next to the computer. Kaeleigh picked up the computer, and in the login box was typed "ben." He still answers to Madden, though, so maybe it's his middle name.

+:+ Politicians have to stop saying that they trust or have faith in the wisdom of the American people. What in the hell gives them this sort of confidence when there is so much proof to the contrary? I can show you, real quick-like, 6 reasons not to have any faith at all in the collective wisdom of the average American: US Representative Michele Bachmann, Candidate Sarah Palin, television show Jersey Shore, spray cheese in a can, the re-election of Bush 43, tea party sign carriers. I could also add reality television and TLC network, really. Birthers. Kardashians. Comme des Garcons toe shoes. Make me stop. Hurry.

The winter is Endless. I can't concentrate on anything, and I have been reading the same book for eleventy weeks. It's good, but I can't read and comprehend right now. I have adult ADD. Or Seasonal ADD. Or, I am just crabby and fussy. Either way, I need...oh, crud. I don't know what I need. Be wonderful for me in Comments.

Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sagging Pants, Republicans, and Brad Pitt: Go On, I Dare You

These past two weeks, my students in American Lit have been studying the work of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, two nineteenth century poets whose work we have analyzed, discussed, and related to modern figures in American life. Feeling moved by the Muse one day--as well as having had my fill of a neverending vista of boxer shorts--I posted this sign on my door and in my classroom:

I'd rather see London--

I'd rather see France--

I'd rather not see your underpants!

No sagging in room 245.

Can someone please explain to me how this is attractive or fashionable or even remotely acceptable in any society? Why are these 15, 16, 17, and 18-year old young men not embarrassed that I can SEE THEIR UNDERWEAR? I routinely call out, "Red and blue plaid!" or "Yellow with blue sailboats!" or "Green with white martini glasses!" as soon as I can see a flash of cotton-polyester blend in front of me. They usually hitch up their jeans and growl goodnaturedly, "Awww, Mrs. D!" and saunter off to their desks. And, get this: most of them are wearing belts! FOR WHAT?!

At least they have learned to spare themselves the sad indignity of sparring with me as they used to. This is how it used to transpire:

Male student enters room sagging, boxers flaunted before me.

Me: Joe Boxers waistband and yellow stripes!
Male: Huh? (looks down) Why you gotta call out my underwear like that?

Me: I thought you were showing it off! It's just hanging out there. I wanted to make sure you knew I noticed it. Your plan is working!

Male: My plan? Maaaaan! Ms. D., that's my underwear. You don't gotta go and put my business all out there and junk.

Me: I don't understand. You put it out there. Your pants are halfway down to your crotch. Your business is waaaay out there. Seems to me that if--

Male: Okay, okay! I'll pull them up. Geeze!

I find this so-called fashion trend nothing short of horrific. Where are "pants," period? Just pants? Just jeans that aren't the pencil-legged spray-painted sort worn by the "emo-boys", nor the oversized trashcan-legged kind in which one can hide an SUV or get holes in the crotch from its being dragged on the ground. I miss plain old boys' pants. I'll tell you when all this sagging bullshit will stop. WHEN GIRLS START DOING IT. There, I said it. And don't give me that crapola about girls showing a peek of a thong out of hi-rise jeans. It's just not the same, and we both know it. I am certainly not advocating either of these hideous anti-fashions; all I'm saying is that if girls start adopting the sag, probably several Agencies and Hearings would be set up to Look Into It. Immediately. Ahem.

And while I'm on the subject of male fashion, here's another thing that has been bothering me. What the heck has happened to men with hair? I have no idea when the idea of men shaving their hair down to the height of toothbrush bristles started, but let me just say here and now that I am dismayed, distraught, and pretty much devastated by this continuing trend. You know me, whenever something like this occurs on a large scale, I get suspicious, and my first, immediate inclination is...Blame The Republicans, a la Hillary (The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy), but it does seem to me that in the 90s, men had longer hairstyles. I know my husband did! We hit the new millenium and men started shaving their heads (or practically!) and now the majority of men have little or no hair. It's awful. A man with luxurious hair will catch my glance ten times more quickly than a man with a pate like a shoebrush. I love to run my fingers through my husband's hair. It's not anywhere near as long as it once was, but it's at least long enough to comb and enjoy. I long for the days when it was really long, and sun-streaked like Brad Pitt's in Legends of the Fall. What's romantic and alluring and inviting about short hair? Ouch.

Here, see for yourself:

If you're being honest, you know you want the Brad With Hair. And you want him Bad. And you'd prefer him NOW. Sigh. And my husband had that hair. Honesttogod and now it is in a ziploc in my drawer!

But I digress.

My point--and I think I do/did have one--is this: men, of all ages, are perpetrating a high degree of bad fashion. And I am sick of it. And it must stop. Please help.

Oh, and it probably would be nice if you read a little Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, too. Especially Walt. He's kind of a 19th century Dr. Phil: he wants you to get excited about your life. To "celebrate yourself and sing yourself." What's wrong with that? Just don't do it in bad fashion.