Last Day

This is the last day of the semester, so I'm in a festive, party mood. I didn't have a party for my big lecture class, which finished up on Wednesday, but I did give them a good last class. I always close this course, Intro to Ethics, in the same way. We begin the semester by reading Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych, the story of a life gone wrong. This sets the structure for the class, in which we read seven great works of philosophy on how to make one's life go right: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the Discourses of Epictetus, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Mill's Utilitarianism, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Sartre's "Existentialism and Humanism" plus snippets from Being and Nothingness, and then, to add a little nonwestern element to the course, Trungpa's Shambhala, or the Sacred Path of the Warrior. On the last day, I ask the students, "If you could take just one of these books and give it to Ivan Ilych, not as he lies dying, but when he's your age, studying at the university, which would it be?" And then we vote. In the big lecture class this term, Shambhala was the winner, with Mill in second place; in my small version of the same course, taught in the Farrand resident hall, Shambhala and Sartre tied; when I taught the course in Maymester, Aristotle won. Poor Kant always gets the fewest votes - none in the Farrand class this time, and only one in the big lecture, and that from one of my graduate student T.A.s. I'm always fascinated to count the votes and see which philosopher will be declared the semester's winner in the best-advice-on-how-to-live-your-life category. I also got my students in the big lecture to clap for me at the end of the class, by making a little speech thanking them for a great semester - a surefire way to garner their applause in return.

I gave my Farrand class a cupcake party on Wednesday; I carried two dozen gorgeous and delicious cupcakes on the Skip with me from Boulder Baked, along with a gallon of milk (which had lumps of ice in it when I went to pour it - that's how cold it's been this week!). Today I gave my Ethical Theory class a pizza party. I was afraid that I had ordered too many pizzas - six extra-large! But not to worry: every slice was devoured. Tonight is the philosophy department non-holiday non-party (university policy doesn't permit university funding for holiday events or parties). Yay for non-holidays! and non-parties! And festive last days of student applause (however transparently solicited) and wise advice on how to go forward to live the rest of our lives.

Still Cold

This is the longest and coldest cold spell that I can remember. It was -7 yesterday morning. Today right now it's +7, which is an improvement, but not a BIG improvement.

Last night I curled up and re-read for the twentieth time These Happy Golden Years, the final volume in the Little House series. Poor Laura, at age fifteen, is teaching school for the first time and boarding away from home for the first time in the miserable, slovenly, hostile shack of the Brewsters. Almanzo Wilder brings his matched horses, Prince and Lady, to drive her home every weekend, but one weekend he almost doesn't come, because it's so cold that the mercury in the thermometer froze when it reached forty below zero. But he does, and oh, the coldness of that twelve-mile ride across the bleak, bare, wind-scoured prairie, where Almanzo has to keep shaking Laura's shoulder so that she doesn't fall asleep and freeze to death.

Then finally, Laura is safely home again, and the cold snap ends. Almanzo takes Laura out sleigh riding on Sunday afternoon: "The wind was blowing, but not too hard, and everyone was so happy and gay because it was only twenty degrees below zero and the sun shone."

So I can be happy because it's seven ABOVE zero. And I think the sun is going to shine here today, too.

A Lesson from Epictetus

It is cold here in Boulder. Cold, as in 4 degrees yesterday morning, and 5 degrees right now. I just checked the weather forecast online, and for today there is a 100 percent chance of snow - how can there ever be a 100 percent chance of anything? This might be our third snowfall in the past week, or maybe the fourth; I've lost count. Now, many people who don't live in Colorado think it's always cold and snowy here. Not so. Here in the Front Range where I live, it's usually mild and almost always sunny - kids wear shorts to school in January, and I see my students sunning themselves on the grass even in the middle of the winter.

One of my students in my big intro to ethics class yesterday, as I was chatting with them before class, asked me, "So are you willing that it snow?"

The question was meant to invoke my favorite of all philosophers, the Stoic Epictetus, whom we had studied together earlier in the semester. Epictetus gave this definition of freedom: A man is free for whom all things happen according to his will. According to Epictetus, we have no control over what happens in the world: that is not "up to us." But we have complete control over our own wills: "My will? Not even Zeus can conquer that." So the way to be free, to have all things happen according to our will, is simply to will that things happen as they do.

If there was one thing Epictetus hated, it was complaining. "My nose is running!" one person sniffled to him. "Well, wipe it, slave!" Epictetus shot back. "I have to be beheaded, and all by myself!" another one whimpered. "Would you have the rest of the world lose their heads for your consolation?" Epictetus retorted.

All right. It's cold. It's snowy. The weather is not up to me. "For Zeus has not made you dispenser of the winds, but Aeolus." The only thing that is up to me is my will. So, yes, I might as well will that it snow today. I'm not quite ready to accept being beheaded, but I can accept that it's going to snow. Again. I can make myself hot chocolate. I can wrap myself in a blanket. I can bake a pan of apple crisp. I can cuddle with my cat, Snickers. I can even steal some time from grading to do some writing.

Let it snow!

Tingly Possibilities

I heard last week that my scholarly paper on the inverted moral code in Eleanor Estes's book The Witch Family, the paper I revised for the second time, appropriately, on Halloween, has been accepted for publication in the children's literature journal The Lion and the Unicorn. Of course, I'm thrilled. I worked very hard on the paper, and it's satisfying to have my efforts bear fruit.

But now when I turn on my email to check if I have any new messages, I can't turn it on in tingly anticipation that I might hear from The Lion and the Unicorn about my Witch Family paper. I COULD hear an encouraging response from my editor at FSG about my revisions to the sequel to 7 x 9 = Trouble!, which I sent off to her before Thanksgiving. So that is one little tingly possibility. And there are standing tingly possibilities: I might get an email saying that How Oliver Olson Change the World is on some end-of-year best books list, or that Being Teddy Roosevelt is on some state readers' choice award reading list, or that some school somewhere wants me to come for a school visit. All of those could happen. But with the Witch Family paper, I knew that sooner or later I HAD to hear from the editor, and after two rounds of revision, I was pretty confident that it would be good news when I did. Whereas I might get no email at all showering accolades on Oliver, or nominating Teddy for a prize, or offering to pay me a lot of money to spend glorious days talking to school kids about writing.

I need more tingly possibilities! So I guess I'd better write another article and send it out somewhere, or do something else that puts me in the position to have a GOOD chance of turning on my email and getting some little delicious tidbit of news. Though I'll go turn it on now, anyway, to see if Margaret has emailed me about the sequel, or if some school wants me for a school visit, or if anybody has somehow felt in the mood for giving me a prize for something, anything.

Controversy

I just received an email from an adult student who is doing a paper on my Gus and Grandpa books for a children's literature course she is taking at Nassau Community College. She had a number of questions to ask me to assist her in writing the essay, and of course I felt enormously honored and flattered by the whole experience.

One of her questions was whether any of my books had been the subject of controversy. My answer was: not really, though one review of Gus and Grandpa complained that Grandpa receives a book on wine as a birthday present, and one review of Gus and Grandpa and the Christmas Cookies was upset that Grandpa lets Gus eat raw cookie dough. But I don't think that amounts to full-blown controversy. To my knowledge I have never had a book that was banned, let alone burned.

I feel sort of guilty about this. I remember a poem I loved in high school, called "No Enemies?" that begins, "You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor." The poet says, of enemies, "If you have none, small is the work that you have done."

And yet . . . okay, I didn't use the word "scrotum" anywhere in the Gus and Grandpa books, but does that mean that small is the work that I have done? And there is no sex, or scandal, in the Gus and Grandpa books, but it wasn't as if I left them out because I was afraid of the wrath of the censor. They just didn't fit into the stories I was writing of the deep and enduring friendship between a seven-year-old boy and his beloved grandfather. There IS a Halloween book in the series, Gus and Grandpa and the Halloween Costume, and one kid in the book does dress up as a vampire, but there are no REAL witches, wizards, or vampires to attract the ire of conservative Christians - but again, it wasn't as if I left them out for that reason.

Oh, well. At least Gus did eat raw cookie dough!

Grandpa's Apple Pie

My father-in-law, the Grandpa of my Gus and Grandpa books, who will turn 99 (!) in another 27 days, still lives in his own home and still is a consummate baker, as depicted in Gus and Grandpa and the Christmas Cookies. He came to our house for Thanksgiving with one of his famous gooseberry pies to share, and here is the apple pie he baked yesterday.

Pretty amazingly beautiful, wouldn't you say?

Getting and Spending

Now that December is upon us, I'm beginning to look back on the year that was (okay, I know it's not over yet, but I'm in a taking-stock mood). One of my goals for the past year was financial: I've had a lot of money woes, and so I decided to make my finances a priority. So I framed the goal as "inviting and welcoming abundance into my life." I would begin with recognizing and affirming the abundance I already have, and then move to the next stage of announcing to the universe that I was ready to receive gratefully any further abundance that would be given me.

Things did not work out the way I planned.

I did attract heaps of abundance into my life, in financial terms. As soon as I announced this plan to the universe, opportunities to make more money kept appearing. I was invited to give more school talks, and more lucrative ones, than I had done in years; I was invited to guest-edit an issue of the Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly for the University of Maryland, for a generous stipend, and then invited to guest-edit a second issue. I taught an overload at CU both semesters, and taught Maymester as well. Every time I turned around, someone was paying me money to do something.

So, how did the plan not work out? Well, here's how. The more I earned, the more I spent. I had a delicious, decadent trip to California with Gregory and his girlfriend, Sierra - and a delicious, decadent trip to New York City with Christopher and his girlfriend, Samantha - and a third delicious, decadent trip to Minnesota with my sister. I bought a new (used) car: a 2003 Subaru, and bought a warranty to go with it, the warranty that somehow covered absolutely everything except for the one major repair I needed. Somehow I spent all the money I made and then some. I have more credit card debt now than I did before I decided to invite and welcome abundance into my life back in January.

This suggests to me that what happened was that, however beautifully I worded my goal in terms of "abundance" rather than cold cash, the universe knew that money was what I wanted, and so I had a year of getting and spending money. Heaps of it. I had a lot of fun spending it, but I got pretty worn out getting it. And in any case, it's all gone, though wonderful memories remain. This was the year of money, money, money.

But Wordsworth said that "getting and spending we lay waste our powers." So, while the getting was quite amazing, and the spending was most enjoyable, next year I think I'm going to focus my energies on something different. Maybe on work, maybe on love, maybe on both. But not, I don't think, on money. I'm probably not sorry I laid waste my powers in such a spectacular way in 2009. But I'm not going to do this again in 2010.