Category Archives: nature

Flooding, dream-hoarding, and reading! Oh, my!

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Saturday morning on the trail.

Storms and flooding have overcome parts of our county and most of the neighboring county. After Friday night’s pelting, we expected large puddles on the bike trail Saturday morning, but we peddled through ponds, however temporary. As I’ve learned over the last two weeks, flooding continues and can, in fact, worsen after the rains cease, so the ponds had nearly doubled in size by the time we encountered them on the return trip.

The humidity made a ride seem ill-advised this morning, and by 3 p.m., the storms had returned, so we contented ourselves with exercise videos and the promise of yard work tomorrow morning.

Today begins Week 6 in my quest to read War and Peace in seventeen weeks, but the book is so compelling that I have already finished the reading for Weeks 6 and 7. I have not made as much progress in the “Shakespeare in a Year” project, however: I’ve read through Sonnet 106 but must still (re)read As You Like It. Speaking of the sonnets, I love this from Sonnet 104:

To me, fair friend, you can never be old;
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still….

It has been a week, but “The Drowned Girl” from Joyce Carol Oates’ new collection, Dis Mem Ber continues to haunt me, and not simply because of its true-crime inspiration. Rather, I remain deeply unsettled by the insightful depiction of students marginalized by “alternate route” admission programs for transfer and / or non-traditional students.

Dream Hoarders (Richard V. Reeves) has also unsettled me (and sent me off to the shelves for Keith Payne’s The Broken Ladder). Reeves’ discussion of internships and other unpaid opportunities for students was particularly uncomfortable: My older daughter works twenty-plus hours per week as an summer intern. Yes, it’s an unpaid internship, but it’s also a priceless opportunity in a competitive (if wildly underpaid) field, where entry-level positions require both education and experience. She and my younger daughter, both undergraduate research assistants, were also asked to continue their projects over the summer, and although one daughter was, quite unexpectedly, offered funding, the other was not. (She did, however, earn a scholarship for achievement in non-major coursework, which had the effect of making the unpaid research seem less… indulgent? privileged? dream-hoarder-like?) Earning an undergraduate research position, especially at a such a large university, where so many capable students vie for so few spots, well, that’s quite an achievement, one that yields the experience, the letters of recommendation, the opportunities to contribute to publications and to present at conferences that make a student a more desirable graduate school applicant and / or jobseeker. So why would any parent say, “No”? And that’s the problem, maintains Reeves. It’s unfair that some students can accept unpaid opportunities while other students cannot. It’s particularly unfair, he continues, that some students have, through their parents’ professional and social networks, access to opportunities, paid and unpaid.

Talk about a challenging read! Here are my commonplace book entries:

p.3
There is one good reason why many Americans feel as if the upper middle class is leaving everyone else behind: They are.

Americans in the top fifth of the income distribution – broadly, households with incomes above the $112,000 mark – are separating from the rest. This separation is economic, visible in bank balances and salaries. But it can also be seen in education, family structure, health and longevity, even in civic and community life. The economic gap is just the most vivid sign of a deepening class divide.

p. 15
The big question is whether we are willing to make some modest sacrifices in order to expand opportunities for others or whether, deep down, we would rather pull up the ladder.

p. 54
The debate over college debt is lively and largely misplaced. It is lively because almost everyone involved in public discourse – scholars, journalists, politicians – went to college and has children who have done or will do so. (Almost every member of Congress has a college degree.) It is misplaced because the real problem in American higher education is not about debt, but distribution and quality. The debt problem is for people from poorer backgrounds who borrow to attend bad colleges.

p. 97
Discrimination on the basis of social class — what we call snobbery in the old country — is largely unacknowledged. Even Americans highly sensitive to the risks of sexism or racism often engage in classism, unaware that they are doing so.

In other bookish news… my younger daughter and I are (re)reading The Odyssey and listening to Elizabeth Vandiver’s wonderful lectures; I am enjoying a flurry of graphic works (more later); and the “twist” in Final Girls (Riley Sager) is no twist. At. All.

Weekending

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Purple and yellow prairie flowers.

I took the image above on a walk / hike last Sunday. Has a week already passed since then? What an odd one. Perhaps it was the holiday just as the week was getting underway? Or maybe it was our collectively held breath over the budget negotiations? Or my misguided decision to mow the lawn on the hottest day of 2017? The week passed not unpleasantly but haltingly, in fits and starts. And here we are, at another weekend. Well. Mine will include two bike rides, one play, and several books. How about yours?

Speaking of books, tomorrow begins Week 4 in my quest to read War and Peace in seventeen weeks. Here are some passages for the commonplace book:

p. 178
‘One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead, lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there? — there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies on the other side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such excitedly-animated and health men.’ So thinks, or at any rate, feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.

p. 207
‘… Go back or I’ll flatten you into a pancake,’ repeated he. This expression evidently pleased him.

p. 299
Her son’s growth towards manhood at each of its stages had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way.

p. 306
Besides, to tell everything as it really happened it would have been necessary to make an effort to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it.

Thursday and Saturday

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The view on our Thursday morning walk.


This afternoon.

This is walking and biking weather. Sitting in the backyard with a book and a mug of coffee weather. Why can’t every summer day be like this? weather. We finally saw the indigo buntings! weather. Just. Beautiful. And it’s only Saturday. Tomorrow’s forecast? Sixty-eight and partly sunny. We certainly picked a good weekend for adventuring near home.

Geocaches, books, and whatnot

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Image taken this past Sunday.

During the first of our two trips downstate last week, we found our fifteenth cache. Small and craftily hidden on campus, it is one that we had been unable to locate in February and March. We must be gaining some skills, eh? Maybe. With our sixteenth find this Sunday, we achieved the sixth of fifteen required caches for the challenge in which we’re participating. Although it is still quite cool here, I suspect it will soon become warmer and buggier than we typically appreciate during our walks in the woods. By Memorial Day, we may need to set aside the challenge until autumn. We’ll see, though.

In the week since my last post, I (re)read eight books:

■ Fatale (Jean-Paul Manchette; 1977 (2011, English). Fiction.)
■ Tenth of December (George Saunders; 2013. Fiction.)
■ The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Geocaching, (2012. Non-fiction.)
■ Briggs Land, Volume 1: State of Grace (Brian Wood; 2017. Graphic fiction.)
■ Those Who Wish Me Dead (Michael Koryta; 2014. Fiction.)
■ Henry IV, Part 1 (William Shakespeare; 1597. Drama.)
■ The Rape of Lucrece (William Shakespeare; 1594. Poetry.)
■ Henry IV, Part 2 (William Shakespeare; 1597. Drama.)

Graphic novel readers, add Briggs Land to your TBR stack. Short story lovers? Have you met Saunders? He reminds me of Vonnegut in all the best ways. Try “The Semplica-Girl Diaries.” It it works for you, put Tenth of December on your nightstand. (Lincoln in the Bardo should already be there.)

The spring semester of my music lessons concluded last week. As I have done for the past two summers, I will take one lesson during each of the summer months and resume weekly lessons after Labor Day. For my solo piece, I am moving from Sadko’s “Song of India” to Bach’s Arioso from Cantata BWV 156. My older daughter, who is taking organ lessons at the University, and I will also be working on Michael Conway’s “Elegy for Flute and Organ.”

In other news, a female Eastern Towhee spent the day in my yard late last week, so I had a new addition to my backyard list. I haven’t seen the grosbeaks, orioles, or hummingbirds yet, but it is getting to be that time of year again: I have begun assembling my garden containers, and my husband and I redefined a corner of our backyard, adding a border and new plants. I repainted all of the outdoor furniture and repositioned the bird feeders. As soon as the evening temperatures increase a bit more, I will finish planting and install a new, wasp-resistant hummingbird feeder. Welcome to my house, butterflies and birds!

Coming up: My daughters will soon conclude their spring semester. Once they return home, our first two theater adventures will be Harvey at the Court and Relativity at Northlight.

Weekend, rainy and cold

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■ The weather did not prevent us from finding our thirteenth and fourteenth geocaches, both of which are part of a fifteen-cache tour we’re on. (We are a third of the way through, with five logged.) After a one-month hiatus, it was a great deal of fun to continue with this pursuit.

■ Two notes on my last entry: I finished Reclaiming Conversation (Sherry Turkle) yesterday and am now eyeing Fatale (Jean-Patrick Manchette) and News of the World (Paulette Jiles). And on the topic of Moby Dick, the librarian featured in this ALA magazine article has a dream job, no?

■ The Handmaid’s Tale is superlative television. Drop everything. Watch it now.

Blossoms

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Image taken on April 8.

We visited the University’s arboretum when we last saw our daughters. It has been in the sixties and seventies there since they returned from spring break; their blooms are weeks ahead of ours.

Speaking of weeks, it has been two since my last post. The time passed in yard work, bike rides, books, two flute lessons, and several volunteer hours, among other things. I also completed “Literature in the Digital Age,” a FutureLearn MOOC. And I saw Remy Bumppo’s Born Yesterday, which runs through the end of this month.

Paul: A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in.

Pursuits

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Site of our seventh geocache.

In the week since I last posted, I

■ saw Captain Fantastic — and loved it;
■ caught up on all of my comics, including the final issue of Revival (which was lame);
■ realized that Season Five of The Americans begins this week and set my DVR (Woot!);
■ counted the days until my daughters return home for break (Woot! again); and
■ thrice-dreamed that I was mowing the lawn. It cannot be time for that already, can it?

This weekend, I read and then saw Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land. National Theatre Live’s rebroadcast of the production featuring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Hirst and Spooner, respectively, earned two enthusiastic thumbs up from us.

From early in Act I:

HIRST: Tonight… my friend… you find me in the last lap of a race… I had long forgotten to run.

Pause.

SPOONER: A metaphor. Things are looking up.

Later in the act:

FOSTER: We protect this gentleman against corruption, against men of craft, against men of evil, we could destroy you without a glance, we take care of this gentleman, we do it out of love.

And from the play’s conclusion:

SPOONER: No. You are in no man’s land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever, icy and silent.

Silence.

HIRST: I’ll drink to that.

If I were a drinker, I’d toast our seventh geocache find. Yes, we made two entries in our log this weekend, one of which occurred before a leisurely walk/hike in a new-to-us park. We arrived at geocaching long after its surge in popularity, but we are thoroughly enjoying this mini-adventure.

If I were a drinker, I’d also toast my new flute. On the recommendation of my teacher, I’ve graduated from a perfectly delightful student instrument to a bold, responsive intermediate instrument that was designed to surpass a player’s needs through college studies. It’s a treasure.

My flute lessons began two years and five months ago, when my daughters, now juniors, began college. My current studies center on Rubank Advanced Method: Flute, Vol. 1. and Pares Scales. I am also preparing the solo “Song of India” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko. Hadyn’s “Serenade,” which is the fortieth of Louis Moyse’s Forty Little Pieces in Progressive Order, preceded this and is technically more difficult, but working on expression in “Song of India” has been developmentally appropriate for me, and I will be sorry to set aside this beautiful piece. Speaking of Forty Little Pieces, although I’ve already presented the most difficult, we continue to pepper my list of open assignments with the remaining songs. For this week’s lesson, I have prepared No. 33.

As an adult student and a retiree, I bring two things to this pursuit most of my teacher’s other students do not have: experience and time. Experienced learners tend to question, clarify, synthesize, and study — a lot. All of this requires time. During my first year of lessons, I once confessed to having only thirty minutes each day to practice before that week’s meeting. Usually, I made time for at least three fifteen-minute practice sessions daily; often, four. “Forty-five minutes?” my teacher responded, wistfully. “I’m happy to hear that students [in Rubank Elementary Method: Flute] have done fifteen minutes a day.” These days, I’m deeply chagrined when I haven’t put in at least four twenty-minute sessions daily, and I aim for six or more.

Of course, younger students rarely struggle, as I most certainly do, with velocity, and they have fewer problems “translating” unfamiliar music. Generally, too, they will travel further and do more with their music, including performances, than an adult learner will be able to do. Still, this is a worthwhile pursuit, and I am grateful for the opportunity.

Coming up: My progress on the “Shakespeare in Year” project; what else I’ve been reading; and more.