Too many pictures?

I have been divided on this for some time: can one take too many pictures?

I grew up in the days when one had to make quite an investment to purchase and develop film. (Developing pictures took a week, postage, patience...). In those days, I think people took pictures more mindful of the result, more attentive to the content. I have never been a photographer, but I was always frugal in my photography, snapping what I considered meaningful photos. (There was, I must admit, a period in my youth when I shot everything! I developed rolls of film from my little Kodak Instamatic yielding nothing much, just lots of cute girls spotted on my vacation, etc.)

I also respect those who by faith and tradition do not like their photos to be taken. See Aniconism. I think we need to be considerate of people who, for whatever reason, do not want captured on film, whether it is just vanity or because they are wanted by authorities. I am also worried whenever my children are photographed, knowing there are (literally) hundreds of their pictures on the Internet now. I fear stalkers, pedophiles, etc.

All that said, my wife is a shutterbug! She takes photography classes. She has a photo-a-day website. She has thousands of pics on facebook, etc. She probably has many gigabytes of photos on her hard drive. When people attend parties at our place, they are surprised if there are not pictures being taken constantly.

On the bright side, there are no gaps in the chronicle of our lives. Everything even remotely significant seems to be immortalized in (digital) film. Whether it's a new Lego castle some kid built or graduating from college, it's all there. Kyle back from the war-Snap. Disney on ice-Snap. Even my kids are in on the act. Chicken lays a big egg-Snap. Chicken poo looks like Italy-Snap.

Our eldest has had so many pictures taken, so many scrapbook pages made of him...he uses these to recollect days gone by. The others have not been forsaken, but they are surely not so thoroughly documented as the eldest.

This, then, leads me to the question I'm wrestling with. When Jax reviews these pictures, how much of what he rattles off is truly memory, and how much of it is reconsititued by pictures he's looking at? Is it memory or is it "photographic memory," pardon the twist on the phrase. I wonder sometimes if making it easy to "remember" by capturing everything in digital images might somehow make it harder to really forge memories.

It's the same information retrieval question I was working on a month or more back. In this era of electronic memory and information, how much content is going to find some traction, some stick, in our true meatspace memory? If it's so easy to access every cake, candle, and present ever received, why would one go to the labor of really remembering it, when it can just be retrieved on a file and reviewed.

I like fond memories and special pictures. I am not so partial to what I am considering an over-documentation of life.

Hmmmm.

Digital Hoarder

I am going to make a confession here: I am a digital hoarder. I discovered this yesterday, when I finally applied myself to an item that's been on my to-do list for years--tidy up digital files.

First, some context... I write, I teach writing, I spend lots of time online finding what I consider to be valuable content of every stripe (from composting toilets to social media in the classroom...sometimes these are much the same, I guess...from etymology to how to build a hen house). I have a shutterbug wife and thus several gig of digital pictures. I have five USB drives and a 500 gig external hard drive. I have thousands of mp3's of music and hundreds of podcasts I record for my online classes...

...and my desktop was something too much like my physical desk top, a catch all pile of clutter. It alone was the laughing stock of the computer staff where I work, for even those with decades of experience and exposure had not seen so much junk on the desktop.

In the past, when shifting from one machine to the next, from one classroom to the next, from one textbook to another...I would just bundle up files and shove them into some vaguely named folder (course files, oldlaptopstuff). Obviously, I've not done decent back ups, for they would simply take too long, be too inconvenient.

You'd think I'd know better, since at another job we had a data loss when my brother toasted a hard drive. Data recovery took days and would have cost thousands of dollars if done out of house.

To make a long story short (too late) I have so far purged over 20 gigabytes of digital diarrhea, and I'm not yet done. I have made many sensible folders and a good "tree" to mount all this new-found structure upon. I have a nifty synch feature that I am going to use, which will not only provide backup, it will also give me access to some of my classroom files "in the cloud" as they say.

Today I'm going to tackle the USB drives.

Not Comfortable

So, I consider myself friendly-enough. I am at least amicable, I think most would agree. I get along with people in elevators, meetings, classes. People report they are surprised to learn that I have a temper!

Yet, sadly, I do not have a close cadre of true friends. I can enumerate a broad count of acquaintances and associates. I can draw an impressive diagram of my extended social networks, and hey, I have 500 friends on Facebook...

I'd trade them all for one good friend (my wife excluded, as her friendship comes with the territory).

I like the way friends are portrayed in the movies and on television. I never had friends like on Friends. I suppose the most close I had was when I was forced into close quarters with fellows on my dorm floor. We would go to the lake, hang out, generally hob nob.

But I do not have any go-to guys that I can call up to just go for a ride. There's not a soul who I know I can just dump on. I haven't any one in my inner-most circles whom I can ask to, say, help me build my deck or move a piece of furniture or babysit my kids.

I used to be in a loop of students and others who joined together for "School of Thought," which was a cool taffy-pull of the imagination, just a bunch of yokels jawing over the edges of the universe and the meaning of consciousness and the affects of substances and the significance of eternity and the like. Alas, they were students, mostly, and I always felt something of an intruder.

There's something to be said for intruding, but it's not something I'm good at. I suppose this reluctance has held me back from making true friends. My wife says it's that I don't invest enough in others. It's hard to do, with family and farm and work all taking priority. It seems, for me at least, like there's little time left.

I think I need to do a reality check, review priorities a little.

What spawned all this was a study reported on NPR about how those with work-related friends saw a 2% increase in their overall longevity. Those who also were active in the lives of others, through church or service (or maybe even in education) saw even greater gains in life expectancy. The study cited lots of other benefits of friendships at work and at large.

Thinking about this makes me skeptical about the status of "friend" on Facebook.

*sigh*

Pooped Parent

It's hard striking a balance, being all things to all people. I had no idea how much harder that might be for an involved parent. I'm an engaged parent. I'm into attachment parenting. I guess I'm overly into my kids, but they are already showing signs of not-such-kidness. It's painful.

Anyway, today I worked from 7-11 on the hen house project. Then I went to the YMCA to chaperon the kids at swim lessons, then we did lunch and the play place. Then it was back to the hen house, then supper, now debriefing in all my accounts, etc.

The thing is, I don't find myself having much energy, ever, to be all I want to be to/for my young'uns. I wish I could invert my schedule somehow and work evenings or something when I was too pooped to care. Then I could give more prime time attention to those who matter most--family.

Meanwhile, I am thankful for summer, when there really are more hours in a day. When it's winter, days are so short, but in summer, we have much more elbow room...especially since we're not really into curfews.

Oh well. I guess I'll just try to do better tomorrow.

One Second After

I just finished reading One Second After, and it brought back the shock. Yep, shock and awe. Shocked that I've been so lackadaisical in my preparation and stewardship. (Sure, I could hold my own, but...) Awestruck that the rest of the nation, especially the powers that be, have done virtually nothing in anticipation of the very real threat of an EMP attack.

This guy's letter sums up about everything I was just about to write. I'm steering anyone who reads my blog over to his, for there's lots of additional content linked from there. Observation: there's a whole industry revolving around survivalists. Who'da'thunk?

I am seeking out an easy on-ramp for those who have zippo in the pantry but know better. I am seeking out the step by step for morons (note, not Mormons, who have always been conservative and prepared). Heck, maybe I'll have to write one. It would include chapters/headings like:

• So, you don't have a budget for Armageddon?
• All good things come to an end--how 'bout this civilization we're experiencing?
• Start with toilet paper...no, maybe a gun...where to begin?
• They might laugh at your stockpile now...

I blame this newly rediscovered enthusiasm on my dad's ghost.

It is Finished

Yet again, another semester in the bag. As always, I have mixed emotions. I cheered for some at commencement (and wagged my head in astonishment as others walked across!). I rent my garments and gnashed my teeth at some in the grade book who just did not get'er done. I always feel responsible, and I always look for clerical errors again and again. I bet it takes me twice as long to enter grades as anyone else.

Ultimately, it comes down to the individual and his/her effort/performance.

However, who's to say exactly what points or percentages measure one's ability to communicate, to think critically? Sure, we can get a bead on how well people pay attention or take notes or retain terminology....but can we really, truly get an objective score to issue? I think my curriculum should issue A/P/F grades. If one is an exceptional writer, they might earn an A. (Even now in my classes, I have some earning an A b/c they are an average writer but exceptional at all the other point-earning ventures in the course.) If one is passable, but not exceptional, they earn a P...and if someone is just a screw up, well...

Otherwise, who's to say whether an 87.3 is a B or an A? What accounted for those points? Do they truly measure something meaningful? I'd like my entire grade book to reflect only writing, but my institution likes to balance the books a little. I think I'll push the line as far as permitted, leaning toward all-writing, all the time, for points.

Meanwhile, I just have to remind myself, as I do every term: be pro-active. Make sure people know, months before grades are due, that they are sliding. Don't let this grade report be guesswork or a shock to anyone. Be fair. Be honest. Be efficient.

Summer is calling. Bye.

No Re-do

I like speculative fiction. I like to sit around and speculate. One thing I've given some thought to: a re-do. Essentially this is the ol' time travel conundrum.

There are things said and done in my past which I really wish had gone otherwise. One was my last conversation with my dad. Another was not performing a play with my 4yr old yesterday when he asked.

Other screw ups, however, might be better left as-is.

Example: If I'd not laid out, flunked out, and dropped out before getting my wiring in order, I would never have been as sensitive and considerate of struggling students. I would always have wondered if I should have become a computer tech (dropped out).

Example: If I'd never gone back home to attempt to run the family business, I'd always wonder if I should have done it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. As it turned out, I learned you can never go back home, exactly. I also learned I'm the last man alive you'd ever want to run your accounting business.

Example: If I'd not be so consumed with my volunteer job, AmeriCorps and the like, [a screw up only because it did not leave me with anything of a life of my own for the better part of ten years] I'd never have met my wife, and that sets in motion a whole tailspin of things that woulda never.

I think, maybe, that every misstep is a good move maybe, so long as we are attentive to the dance.

I'm the oddball

INTERESTING things I'm hearing from students this term. Interesting and alarming:

In literature class, several claimed no one had ever really read their essay responses before, and they were pleasantly surprised that I had--even when marks were less-than-flattering.

More than a dozen times this term students have thanked me for commenting on their work, even if it smarted some. (One guy said I was "blunt," but he liked that.)

In a journal entry, someone said in 60 credit hours at this school, I was the first and only instructor to call him by name. (It's not like his name was challenging, either, like Ilir or Jehoshaphat. )

Altogether, this is peculiar. I always think I'm a bad teacher, for I never get it all covered, I never feel I've accomplished enough, I always fear they will sue me for intellectual malpractice or something. I am constantly comparing myself to my peers, wondering why I'm so remedial, so pokey. How is it they have a life and I do not? Sure, some of it is that I have to teach a double load to try to survive, but I've always felt there were other conditions, too, that I was just slow in the head, perhaps, or that I needed to grade differently.

Maybe I should just plow ahead and not look back so much. I know that when I literally was plowing, looking back would make my rows veer off at an angle. Stay the course. Straight and steady.

14.14.21.35 until grades are due!

Lucid Dreams

So, even if I were laid up in a hospital or prison (not that either is in the cards for me, I hope), I would be entertained.

In fact, I think one of the worst ideas ever was to put television sets in hospital rooms. If I am there to convalesce, then I don't want to be consumed by commerce...but that's another topic.

If I were reduced to little but a torso and head, I would find ways to be entertained, amused, engaged. If I could not even communicate with others, if my realm were no more than what was before my eyes and beneath my eyelids, I'd be fine.

How can I say such things? because I have an imagination. I pity those who do not. I just wag my head at those who boo-hoo about boredom. People whine about "needing" a budget for movies, bars, books, drugs, travel, etc...

I have something for those folk, but it does take effort: lucid dreams. I can drift in/out of consciousness so fluidly that the line can be blurred (on purpose, but also sometimes by circumstance). My life is Inception or The Matrix. (Maybe that's why I like those films so much!)

Almost any night, I can take the ephemeral reigns of my dreams and guide the coursers where I wish. Thus, I am my own production studio. I don't need CGI, for I have, again, imagination. While movies attempt to simulate the power of creative imagination and dreams, I am actually at the helm, the control panel, and I can tweak and twist one hell of a series of images, seemingly all night long. No, I don't have mastery of this, and I doubt anyone does. I do, however, have a gift at envisioning whatever I want and then actuating it in my sleep.

My sleep self and I are pretty tight buds. I know this is not the case for many people. They are astounded at what may bubble up from their dreams. They blush and burble over the intricate sensuality perking and lurking just behind the REM.

While I think of all this as a gift, the truth might be less glamorous. Some studies I have read just chalk it up to sleep deprivation. As has been proven already in my life (see the sleep study and apnea entries from last April), I am suffering from severe sleep apnea. That would mean, by default, that I am actually getting very little restorative sleep. That's the down side. On the up, however, those with my condition slip into REM much more efficiently than the average sleepy head. We milk the moment for all it is worth.

Wish I were so efficient in my waking life.

I'll admit it...

Guilty Pleasure, a confession

Okay, I liked Britney since she was on Disney. I turned a blind eye toward her, like one might a deer they'd hit on the side of the road, when she was in her slump.

Now, however, I am in her camp again. I have this thing for underdogs, for those who have been beaten down but rise up again to do great things. Robert Downey Junior comes to mind.

Charlie, are you paying attention? Someday I might be able to root for you, too!

Okay, I admit Spears isn't going to end homelessness or bring world peace...but hey, she's back on her feet, dancing, having fun, it seems. She's recovering from all that the media did to her (and all she brought on herself). Yes, she's still likely owned by corporate media, but as a person, I hope she's off on a positive, fresh start this time. I hope she eclipses herself, that she (somehow) makes Michael Jackson and Elvis seem like mashed potatoes and milk. I am her champion, now, and I guess I'm not too afraid to admit it (at least here on this little blog that no one reads). :)

Go ahead and watch her newest video....You know you want to!

Keeping up with the Joneses

I'm reviewing my blog here and realizing something--I'm not keeping up with my students! I've only written about 18 entries since the start of the term, while I'm demanding 3 weekly from students (about 27 to date). Fortunately, they aren't reading this journal/blog anyway, so they'll never know/care.

Keeping up with the Joneses is a problem. Comparing with others is always a problem. I suppose it can be argued that it can be healthy, motivational. On the other hand, it can be damning. One might see that someone has a shiny new house and Lexus, for example, and feel stepped on for they only have a hovel and fleet of broken-down vehicles.

The urge to keep up causes us to be rabid consumers of everything, rampant omnivores. I am guilty of this, even though I am very aware of it. Such insatiable need to feed creates in us this discontent, usually at first with our earning potential, but eventually general discontent with everything.

I have to fight to keep this in check. I'm losing the fight. My buddy is building a new house. Another one has a sweet home in a small berg nearby. Another is remodeling a groovy ranch-style home I am coveting for its efficient floor plan. Someone just tore down a cool farmhouse and homestead (see other entry) that I would have loved to have as my own...

...then again, I have a house with some history. (Part of it was built in the very early 1900's.)
It's on 11 acres, which gives us the luxury of campfires, cookouts, raging crazy parties on the property...we have the ability to raise a garden of any size we want. We can have livestock, burn trash, etc. We can learn of the prairie on the east side and develop the cropland on the west side. We virtually live on a park, a prairie reserve!

And it gives me space (without zoning laws and restrictions) to build composting areas, a hen house...even a pirate ship playground!

We also have the luxury and blessing of a multi-generational blended household, giving my kids an intimacy with their relatives that I never knew.

I need to remember such things. When the front door jams or the other door leaks rain and ants, when the vehicle breaks down (again and again), when an investment in triple A is a necessity just for the towing package, when we cannot pay all the bills for our craptaular house and fleet of beaters...I need to remember we have it good.

And I need to quit thinking of it as a competition.
That's just stinkin' thinkin' after all.

Sick at my Stomach

You know what makes me sick? (That's Earl Pitt's famous opening line, and I'm stealing it today.)

I cannot drive down my country road any more without being repulsed. I truly, honestly get nauseous whenever I pass by the spot where it happened. No, it's not where I hit a deer, nor where there was a grizzly accident.

Nope. Now it's nothing but more field. That is what is so disgusting to me. Now, down the road 10 miles these jokers have cut down and plowed up about 500 trees (not much of an exaggeration, if any) along a dry creek bed. They have had heavy equipment in to sculpt the land with new terraces, etc. I know what they are doing. I know why they are doing it. By eliminating the trees and creek bed they are hoping to gain a few more acres of ground to till, and by sculpting it as they have, they are likely to have a much easier time working the ground and harvesting the crops.

I say, however, that the best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft a-gley! That's right, I said "gang aft a-gley" dammit. When we first cut up the prairie with fences, it wreaked havoc with the migration patterns of many animals. This was further complicated with our infernal criss-crossing of underground petrol-product piping and blacktop roads. Now, as we bull-doze every stand of trees, what is left in the wake? Nothing but a field. That leaves little shelter for deer and other wildlife. It makes this beautiful part of the country look too much like western Kansas. Windbreaks are valuable! Here's what was offered in a KSU study, NON-AGRICULTURAL BENEFITS OF WINDBREAKS IN KANSAS:

"Windbreaks may provide recreational opportunities, scenic beauty, fuelwood, and wildlife habitat in addition to agricultural benefits. Quantitative studies demonstrate that windbreaks on the Great Plains provides important wildlife habitat for woodland edge species, substantial opportunities for recreation, a potentially important source of fuelwood, and enhanced scenic beauty."

And this is to say nothing of erosion control.

So, down the road, I am seeing farmers plowing up trees by the hundreds. These people are no longer stewards of the land but slaves of Monsanto. Yet, I digress.

What really turns my stomach is a former homestead now-turned into another field.

This place was easily 80-100 years old. It had an impressive stand of trees surrounding what was likely 4 acres of old homestead land. There were out buildings (a barn, a chicken house, a well house) and a very impressive two-level house with big columns out front. It looked like a small abandoned plantation house from the road.

I wish I knew the history of that old house and farm. I wish I'd known the people who'd lived there, who'd built the place. I wish I had some way to travel back in time and watch the property evolve. Hell, I wish I'd stopped and wandered the property one of the thousand times I have driven by and thought about it.

I grieve for this old place. To me, places hold memories, maybe even ghosts. To destroy them for factory farming is a heinous and criminal act. Where I grew up, every tree was rare and sacred. I'm not tree hugging fairy nymph, either; don't get me wrong. I'm just offering that by slaying 100+ year old trees we're disrespecting our elders. We're spitting in the eye of mother nature. We're pissing away some great shade, wood, possibly walnuts. To bull-doze it all with utter disregard for its worth is disgusting.

I am thoroughly disgusted....so on that, I shall return to my regularly scheduled programming.


__________________________


Details on the phrase, found here:

Meaning: The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.
Origin: "of mice and men"
From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.

It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest. The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse:

...
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.
...

The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.

Beat Down

Hat hair
Matted grass
Shelter/rescue dogs

I am likewise beat down.

It doesn't matter how hard, how many days, how many weekend hours--I cannot seem to scale the pile of work I have to do.

I know, boo-hoo, right?

I've no answer to the problem. I've written about it many times in the past 4 years, I'm sure. This time, however, it's really wearing on me. I'd go see a shrink but that costs more time and money--and that, again, is the root of this entire problem.

So, shrink--out.

Therapeutic catharsis by way of....

1. exercise (you must be kidding)
2. creative writing (at the same keyboard I should be grading from, so...no)
3. nature hike (winter, ugh!)
4. shopping (see money, above)
5. web-surfing (see creative writing, #4 above)
6. kids (guilty about not working)
7. grilling (guilty about not working)
8. sleep? ahhhhh, there it is!

Sleep, the elixir that calms my spirit. Sleep in bliss, in ignorance--alas, that's just denial, and when I wake, I know this and feel EVEN WORSE.

So, one might ask, what exactly am I doing blogging? How is this any better than 1-8, above? Well, it's not. In fact, maybe it's worse, because it's public. Dumb idea, huh?

Regardless, here I sit, beat down.
Stalemate.
Stagnate...

Ugh--I gotta do something!

This morning at 430 when I left for work, I was of the old school workaholic plan that led me through a dark decade past. My thinking: I will work through this (literally) by applying nose to grind stone until done. Enough pressure, over enough time, applied to said stone should smush it into submission.

I mean, surely it could all be done, right, even if for only a moment (like laundry or housework).
Maybe it would be different if it paid better. As-is, this job is too often paying about like laundry or housework! Oh well, at least I have a house, right?

Peas in a Pod

My wife and I spent a romantic weekend in a bed and breakfast. For us, it would have been romantic to simply be able to converse uninterrupted (we have 4 kids) and in private (we also have 3 other adults living in our house). We were able to have free-flowing, unobstructed dialogue (the B&B was virtually unplugged, too, a reconstituted 1880's hotel, rooms were sans wifi, TV, etc.) for hours!

A result of all that is not the happy conception of yet another child.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Instead, we were able to compare notes on some life goals, and we were able to learn that we are, even after nearly a decade, both on the same page. In fact, we were very close on our goals, virtually synchronized. We also were able to learn each others priorities anew, too. I, for instance, did not know she still wanted to get a degree; she did not realize how very important it is to me to build onto the house.

People need time and space. Married people need some of that together. We very seldom (quarterly, semi-annually) get time like that. It was the best Valentine's gift EVER.

It's WHAT?

Yep, it's December 7th alrighty.

How is it possible that it's FINALS WEEK?

I have these feelings sometimes about this time of year. (Honestly, I have them all year 'round, the older I get.)

I am astonished.

Now, do not confuse astonishment with amazement. I've written about amazement before...For that matter, I've previously written about how good it is to marvel, how one should live in the now, about how attending too much to the past or future is not valuable--but the truth is, sometimes all that is window-dressing, whitewashing, or otherwise hogwash. (Who knew such potential in cleansing compounding words?)

Sometimes, when I really admit it, I think I'm living in Oblivion. Yes, I felt like that when I lived in Western Kansas, but that was physical and literal...now I'm talking cerebral.

Astonished oblivion is not bliss. I wish it were, for it would then be easier to say, "mission accomplished." Bliss, after all, is on my bucket list...if it could be. Some theorize that bliss is a state of being, not a destination nor some thing one could ever cross off of a bucket list.

So here I am, dumbfounded at the date.

Where did the time go? I wish I still had my watch that chimed every quarter hour. I wish I lived and worked in places that only told time with large grandfather clocks--no, loud cuckoo clocks. Outside, every major gathering of buildings should have a bell tower with the most cacophonous carillon, and from that should burst the boldest acknowledgment of time passing, at least every fifteen minutes. No, make the carillon a klaxon, and mount it to my head.

In short, I wish I could be made more aware, constantly, of the passing of time.

Perhaps instead of cleaving to amazement, I should instead be aspiring toward awareness.

I am most alarmed by all this when I look at pictures, even ones from the recent past. I am sometimes shocked at my own work, only a semester old or less--I surprise myself that I wrote this or I did that. (Ever read Flowers for Algernon...similarly, I feel like I'm slowly realizing my own retreat to senility.) Even worse than the 'typical man' who might casually (strategically?) forget (plausible deniability?) he said or did something, I seem to be fading. It annoys my wife. It frustrates my children. It surprises me.

Maybe I'm making too much of it. After all, this is Finals week, the time when I have hundreds of papers to grade and take the responsibilities of my job far too seriously. I sleep less, I worry more, and I grade most of all. Grading papers, as anyone who does too much of it can attest, can dull one's wits. I am also prone to sentimentality at this time of year (Finals, yes, but doubly so, the holidays). In repressing sentiment, yes, even when grading, I think perhaps I repress what's left of my wit and wisdom as well.

Why else, I am realizing as I am typing this, would I have shared so?

The coming twilight

So, this is how it's going to be.

I've just turned a corner, mentally, coming to acknowledge just how old I am. People who I seemed to chum around with of late, people I'd come to consider my peers...are retiring. Today it hit me hard, as one of my "besties" told me the road had been long but it was now forking. This leaves me in the dust.

And we all turn to dust.

That's what is becoming more and more obvious to me. I've had something of a delayed maturation, since I did not marry (for good) until late, did not have kids until only 7 years ago. On Facebook, I see that most of my old cronies from high school are old cronies and worse--grandparents.

So my buddies are retiring grandparents.

I look at their pictures and I see "mature" people. This has been instructive, for in the same way we cannot often discern the changes in our own kids/environment because we are always there, our brains only mapping general detail (unless we're physically threatened or have some other need to be more attentive)--in that same, oblivious way, I've ignored my own maturation, my own sagging and wrinkling and plumping.

I guess I thought I could cope well-enough with getting old, myself. I'd just never had to embrace the fact that those around me would be checking out, too. It's starting to get lonely here. I feel the cold chill of the nursing home, already.

I'll tell you one thing--I'm going to start doing the math on my KPERS (retirement fund) to see just how close I, myself, might be to clocking out. Hmmmm.

For better or worse

Well, I had 3 days of something-like-summer recently. I was able to take each one of my boys out and spoil him for a day. Jax, the oldest, liked video games, air conditioning, and a movie at the Palace. Carson, on the other hand, wanted a tour of regional lakes (we hit 6). Edison, age 3, was thrilled to spend the morning at the zoo, then ask to share the afternoon with his brothers swimming in a lake and playing at a splash park.

My wife and I even had 1/2 a morning together out on the town. We even got to eat at a restaurant with silverware and plates!

All this after the big, annual back-to-school camp out bonanza we always do at our farm. (I think, now, that we should just call it that: the bonanza!)

That's all the "for better" part of the post, all an improvement on last post's "un-summer" woes. I have since eclipsed all the sorrows of that post with my current state of affairs, tuning up classes with all new books and online content. I was hoping to finish today, but it looks like a long weekend ahead. *sigh* Eventually, it will all be worth it.

I have withdrawal symptoms when away from my family. I also get a nervous tick in my eye when I work this much on the computer non-stop.

The un-summer

This summer has seemed to be lackluster. There have been no exotic family trips (though I did go to NYC, it was not the same and not w/family). No kids were born (though Ella did celebrate her first birthday). We've had no major construction projects, where in past years it was remodeling the house, building the carport, etc. I have, of course been working on the pirate ship steadily, I guess, but that is not yet a milestone project.

I should not belly ache. My best friends are in more complicated straits:

• wife battling and recovering from cancer
• being deported to Afghanistan
• enduring a liver transplant

...while I am just boo-hooing being bored and overworked.

Nonetheless, things have seemed humdrum. Yes, I taught 3 extra summer sections. Yes, I've kept the farm mowed and maintained. Yes, I've been home most of the time for people. Yes, I have my health.

I just feel like 1/2 a guy, like I'm running on battery backup and not full-charge. I look around at all that I've not done, all that I'm not doing, and I get more and more undone. I think of how I longed for summer, but that now that it's waning, I'm realizing (as I do with every season and semester change, everyone's birthday, every turn of the calendar) the moment is passing.

Summer....it escapes me.

Character--built!

A couple of entries back, I was dreading a trip due to my deep-seated fears of cities. I can't cross that off the list entirely, but I can say I have had some insights....

1) we're all the same, really, just a bunch of insecure bags of water making our way

2) people of NYC were indifferent, not at all preying on my ignorance but more helpful than I ever expected

3) nobody approached me for anything (back to insight 2) = anonymity and invisibility which I often prefer

4)NYC (well, we were really mostly in Manhattan) is just iron and stone, brick and mortar, and a whole lot of people squished together

This last one seems silly, but 'tis truly an insight. Like when our iconic heroes are leveled to be mere actors, like when our flawless parents prove to be all too human--the emblem of NYC that forever loomed over me as some Thing that I am not is now...well a very big town that one walks in, rides through, navigates about like anything else. It is not impenetrable. It is not impregnable nor impossible to manage. People there are, indeed, steeled up for speed, chaos, crowds, crime--but they are also very much still juuuust people. (You could take someone off the streets of NYC and dress them like a Kansan and no one could readily see a distinction.) They watch the same shows [Warehouse 13] we do (well, and some there also watch $250 a night Broadway shows). They eat fast food, [Subway] same as me. Even the TV channels were very much like I'd watch in Ulysses. This last insight, this "sameness," really surprised me. I don't know what I'd expect them to watch and do....maybe to be constantly cosmopolitan or criminal--I don't know. I have found, at any rate, that traveling together on planes, buses, etc. levels the playing field, puts us all on the same page, makes us all 'mericans.

This also puts me on the cusp of something that I know to be true, yet in my schema have yet to prove to myself: that even people the world over are more similar than different. We may not all be Americans, but we're all people...basically good people. I know that's right, but I have many more hurdles to overcome before I'll ever be able to walk the streets of Jakarta or Tokyo comfortably.

Someday I hope to be that savvy.

So Long...

So, it's finals week in my world, which means high stress, long hours, and incredible pressure. I tend to be over-wrought on all counts, overly-emotional, altogether unpleasant to be around. (This is unfortunate for my daughter, for her birthday falls at the end of finals week.)

I can get through the grading. Every year I write myself notes on how horrible this feels, how very much I should knuckle down earlier in the term to prevent such anxiety and overload...of course, most of this is the nature of the beast, teaching a double load of nearly all college freshman writing classes. I always shake my head in sorrow, lament how it sucks to be me...but then, there are much worse jobs.

The worst part of this: severing ties. Here's where too much disclosure can be downright unmanly, uncomely, uncouth...so I forge ahead. The truth is, I am a sappy guy. I have emotions. I build bridges and bonds and relationships with students that lead me to make too much of an investment in them. "How can a teacher do too much of this?" one might ask, for it would seem good teaching, like good parenting, would be an all-out venture. You cannot love too much, can you?

When I reason through from this angle, I do agree, it's a good thing to throw deep, to "care."

I have had some amazing ends to semesters, too. I've had students bearing gifts. I've had classes applaud. I've had a steady stream of referrals to my classes. Once, back when it was in the collective conscious of the public, a class spontaneously stood up on their chairs and did the "Captain, my captain" thing from Dead Poet's Society. (Really!) I've had people name their children after me. (Not really!) It's been a good ride, overall, even in the home stretch.

It's just that every semester is like a new relationship, or in my case 100's of them. Of the 100's per semester, 99% of them "die." Thus, finals week is like seeing all these people on the morgue table one last time. If ever I see them again, it will likely be years from now. When I see them again, it will be a head bob hello, a grunt, a vague recollection.

Worse yet, the Eddie Haskell's of this world, the kid who seems to be bonding, seems to care, and yet behind my back or the day after grades are due--cold-hearted villain. There's nothing to be done about bad apples and insincerity, but those folk are hurtful, make one want to choke back on the bat and be more an automaton and less a caring individual.

All that said, I feel no better, and I have many, many goodbye's left this week.