Today is the last day of my first year here. I've moved out of the adorable tiny house I rented this year from a professor on sabbatical in Guatemala. When I return for year two, I'll be renting a beautiful but bigger house from a professor on sabbatical in Germany. So I packed up all the huge quantity of stuff I had brought with me last summer from Colorado, plus the huge quantity of stuff I have somehow acquired during my year here: books! clothes from my new favorite boutique, Greencastle Goodwill! and two fabulous cookie jars! and more! All of that has been moved to my fortunately spacious office at the Prindle Institute. I'm flying back to Colorado, not driving, so I'm taking only a carry-on suitcase and small backpack on the plane.
I will have tears in my eyes as I lock the door of my little house for the last time. I have been so happy here this year, even though the year turned out to be very different in many ways from what I imagined. I thought I'd have endless hours to start writing the memoir I've been thinking about, to read and write poetry, to proceed on my 2012 writing resolution to write "a book that surprises me." Well, I did do a considerable amount of scholarly writing, as well as two chapter books that were rejected by either my agent or my publisher (note: rejection is good - it means you're stretching and growing), and the start of two chapter books that did get accepted.
But mainly I threw myself into the intense intellectual life of this small college in the middle of a small rural county in western Indiana. I taught three successful classes, including one I had never taught before. I participated in six reading groups in the fall and five reading groups in the spring. I attended countless talks and concerts. Seldom was there ever an evening I was home. I explored so much of Indiana - drives to see the covered bridges of Parke County, New Harmony and Lincoln's boyhood home with my sister, opera in Bloomington, the maple syrup festival. I had weekend trips to Milwaukee, Chicago, and Cincinnati. I reconnected with dear old friends. I made dear new friends.
Overall, I would say that this year I've been about as happy as a person can be. And there is a lot to be said for happiness. Indeed, one of the happy events I attended this year was an entire retreat/seminar on happiness. Now I could lead that retreat and teach that seminar. And after six sweet weeks back in Colorado, I'll return for year two. Here's hoping it will be as happy as this past year has been. But it could be a tenth as happy and be happy enough.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Happy Birthday, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
My Rousseau course is different from anybody else's because I love Rousseau more than anybody else does. Most of all I love the passionate intensity with which Rousseau engages life, the intensity of what he would call his "sentiment of existence."
His autobiography, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was the first great modern autobiography, striking for its shockingly candid confessions about childhood sexuality (Rousseau had a predilection for "chastisement"), deeply regretted misdeeds (he cast blame upon a fellow servant girl for the theft of a ribbon he himself had pilfered, leading to her dismissal and likely ruination), and bizarre life choices (he had a prolonged sexual relationship with a female mentor, Madame de Warens, whom he regarded as his "maman"; he had five children with the woman who later became his wife, an illiterate chambermaid, and gave them all away to a foundling asylum). "How can you like such a person?" I'm frequently asked. I like him because he tells us all of this without hesitation in a book that makes for riveting reading on every page. My students always tell me how glad they are that we begin and end the course with reading the Confessions.
We also read Rousseau's novel, Julie, or the New Heloise, the best-selling novel of the 18th century. I have to admit that my students are less pleased about this, as the novel is extremely long, told in letters that run to twenty or thirty pages in some places, recounting the doomed love between Julie and her tutor, who is given the alias of St. Preux. His real name is never disclosed, presumably so that readers can suspect that it might be none other than Jean-Jacques himself. In his treatise on education, Emile, which reads in places like a novel, the fictional tutor of the fictional child, Emile, is actually called Jean-Jacques. The man did not have a small ego.
But he had prodigious talents that would justify a large ego. His Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, a hymn to what humankind has lost as we moved from "savage man" living in an amoral, innocent state of nature to the corrupt artificiality of civilized society, was a founding document of romanticism. His On the Social Contract was a founding document of the French Revolution's call for radical democracy. The child-centered educational methods of Emile are influential to this day. His late-life collection of essays, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, are masterpieces of French prose. Oh, and he also wrote an opera (score and libretto) that was the toast of Paris - Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer).
So happy birthday, my dear Jean-Jacques. I wish I could be in Geneva for the festivities. Instead, I'll observe the day with a solitary walk, filled with reveries of a tormented, brilliant, paranoid, sensitive, witty, narcissistic, fascinating genius.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Old Time Religion
Last Sunday afternoon I went with my dear friend Keith to a church ice cream social in celebration of the 175th anniversary of the Putnamville United Methodist Church. Putnamville is a tiny hamlet around five miles south of Greencastle. To get there, we could have driven on a major road - state highway 231 to state highway 40 - but knowing how I love the back roads of Indiana, Keith chose a route on narrow county roads that wound past fields of corn and soybeans.
The church social featured grilled hotdogs with all the trimmings as well as an excellent selection of home-made pies. We shared a piece of the raspberry pie: delicious. Music was provided by a bluegrass gospel band called Upward Journey, playing toe-tapping tunes like "I Saw the Light" and "Leanin' on the Everlasting Arms."
I could have sat there listening to the music and eating pie forever, but Keith and I had to get on the road to head to Goldsmith, Indiana, population 200, Keith's home town in rural Tipton County, where we attended the Sunday night card game that has been going on for FIFTY years, since the players were small tykes hanging out at the town wallpaper store. I don't play cards but loved listening to the banter of these friends of many decades.
So first my day had old-time religion. Then it had an old-time card game of old-time friends. Gimme that old-time Indiana!
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Geography of Bliss
In the pleasant afterglow of the Prindle Institute happiness retreat that I attended two weeks ago, I have been on the prowl for more insights into how to be happy. Browsing in the surprisingly well-stocked bookstore in Logan Airport on my way home from the Children's Literature Association conference in Boston last weekend, I stumbled upon The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, by Eric Weiner, and snapped it up. It proved to be a delightfully entertaining and insightful read.
A veteran foreign correspondent, Weiner decided to spend a year traveling the globe, "seeking out not the world's well-trodden trouble sports but, rather, its unheralded happy places." Working off the World Database of Happiness, he selected ten countries to visit in order to figure out why they were happy, or in some cases (Qatar, Moldova) unhappy. For each country he distilled some core lessons on happiness, always with witty commentary about the various characters he encountered along the way and the stories they shared. The full list of countries: The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and America.
His ultimate conclusions, summarized in one short paragraph:
Money matters, but less than we think, and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.
The country that appealed to me the most, from Weiner's portrait of it, was Iceland, which he visited in the dead of its dark, dark winter. He summed up his lesson from Iceland as "Happiness is failure." One of the reasons Iceland is such an enjoyable place to live is because it produces more artists and writers per capita than any other nation. Why so much creativity? One of Weiner's interviewees, Larus Johannesson, tells Weiner that "It's because of failure. . . Failure doesn't carry a stigma in Iceland. In fact, in a way we admire failure." If you're free to fail, Weiner realizes, this means you're free to try. He decides that while Americans like failure, as an appetizer to whet our hunger for the story of spectacular subsequent success, "For Icelanders, failure is the main course."
Weiner explains that, "There's no one on the island telling [Icelanders] they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write. One result of this freewheeling attitude is that Icelandic artists produce a lot of crap. They're the first to admit it. But crap plays an important role in the art world. In fact, it plays exactly the same role as it does in the farming world. It's fertilizer. The crap allows the good stuff to grow."
Okay. Off to write some fertilizer. And make myself a bit happier in the process.
A veteran foreign correspondent, Weiner decided to spend a year traveling the globe, "seeking out not the world's well-trodden trouble sports but, rather, its unheralded happy places." Working off the World Database of Happiness, he selected ten countries to visit in order to figure out why they were happy, or in some cases (Qatar, Moldova) unhappy. For each country he distilled some core lessons on happiness, always with witty commentary about the various characters he encountered along the way and the stories they shared. The full list of countries: The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and America.
His ultimate conclusions, summarized in one short paragraph:
Money matters, but less than we think, and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.
The country that appealed to me the most, from Weiner's portrait of it, was Iceland, which he visited in the dead of its dark, dark winter. He summed up his lesson from Iceland as "Happiness is failure." One of the reasons Iceland is such an enjoyable place to live is because it produces more artists and writers per capita than any other nation. Why so much creativity? One of Weiner's interviewees, Larus Johannesson, tells Weiner that "It's because of failure. . . Failure doesn't carry a stigma in Iceland. In fact, in a way we admire failure." If you're free to fail, Weiner realizes, this means you're free to try. He decides that while Americans like failure, as an appetizer to whet our hunger for the story of spectacular subsequent success, "For Icelanders, failure is the main course."
Weiner explains that, "There's no one on the island telling [Icelanders] they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write. One result of this freewheeling attitude is that Icelandic artists produce a lot of crap. They're the first to admit it. But crap plays an important role in the art world. In fact, it plays exactly the same role as it does in the farming world. It's fertilizer. The crap allows the good stuff to grow."
Okay. Off to write some fertilizer. And make myself a bit happier in the process.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Don't Make It Worse
Yesterday I had, to quote Judith Viorst, "a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day." A big project that I had screwed up royally occasioned a tense conversation with someone I love, and I don't handle conflict very well - actually, I can't deal with conflict AT ALL - so when I have conflict, I cry, which never improves matters, for what is more pathetic, really, than a 57-year-old crybaby? So at 4:30 I left work and slunk home to spend the evening wallowing in misery.
Here is the important thing: I wallowed in misery for the next several hours, but I didn't do anything to make things even worse. I had already had a huge late lunch, but I could have driven to Dairy Castle and bought myself a cheeseburger AND a hot fudge sundae with their wonderful black raspberry ice cream, thereby undoing a week's worth of careful eating monitored by My Fitness Pal. I didn't do that. And there is a certain person I was tempted to call, thereby undoing two weeks' worth of resolve not to call this person. I didn't call this person. Instead I got in bed and read for the entire evening: Beverly Cleary's two memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, reading that I need to do to revise and expand my paper on Cleary's Henry Huggins and Ramona books for the book being made out of the papers from the China conference. So in a small way, I actually made my life better.
But making things better is more than we should expect of ourselves when it's wallowing time. It's enough that we just don't make things worse. This morning I woke up and weighed myself and had a pleasant number to record to My Fitness Pal. I felt glad I hadn't made any phone calls to regret afterward. I walked to the Greencastle farmers' market and had a blissful hour sitting in the shade chatting with the knitters and crocheters who congregate there. Now I'm going to drive to Bloomington with my friend Keith to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and have an early dinner.
Things are going to be okay. They always are, sooner or later. But because I didn't make things even worse on my bad day yesterday, things can be better sooner rather than later. And I'm grateful for that.
Here is the important thing: I wallowed in misery for the next several hours, but I didn't do anything to make things even worse. I had already had a huge late lunch, but I could have driven to Dairy Castle and bought myself a cheeseburger AND a hot fudge sundae with their wonderful black raspberry ice cream, thereby undoing a week's worth of careful eating monitored by My Fitness Pal. I didn't do that. And there is a certain person I was tempted to call, thereby undoing two weeks' worth of resolve not to call this person. I didn't call this person. Instead I got in bed and read for the entire evening: Beverly Cleary's two memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, reading that I need to do to revise and expand my paper on Cleary's Henry Huggins and Ramona books for the book being made out of the papers from the China conference. So in a small way, I actually made my life better.
But making things better is more than we should expect of ourselves when it's wallowing time. It's enough that we just don't make things worse. This morning I woke up and weighed myself and had a pleasant number to record to My Fitness Pal. I felt glad I hadn't made any phone calls to regret afterward. I walked to the Greencastle farmers' market and had a blissful hour sitting in the shade chatting with the knitters and crocheters who congregate there. Now I'm going to drive to Bloomington with my friend Keith to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and have an early dinner.
Things are going to be okay. They always are, sooner or later. But because I didn't make things even worse on my bad day yesterday, things can be better sooner rather than later. And I'm grateful for that.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Lesson Learned (Again)
In books, especially in books for children, the main character faces some problem that is usually solved by her coming to learn some truth about herself, or about the world, or about her place in the world. I love these epiphany moments in books, if they aren't too heavy-handed and didactic. These are the moments when, as a reader, I get joyful tears in my eyes at the rightness of what is being learned, particularly if it's something that speaks to me on a deep personal level, addressing some demon I've been wrestling with in my own life.
But here is one key difference between literature and life. In literature, the main character learns a lesson, and it stays learned; if there's a sequel, she goes on to learn some different lesson in the next book. In real life, we have to learn the same lesson over and over - and over - again.
I remember that a year ago I blogged about learning how to delegate, as I was cleaning up a devastated property for sale and desperately needed and welcomed the assistance of an army of brilliant, hardworking graduate students who came to my rescue. Delegating is the key to success! I think I wrote something to that effect in this very blog.
Today I learned that same lesson again. I'm working on the logistics for the conference on Ethics and Children's Literature that I'm organizing at the Prindle Institute for Ethics this coming September. It's to be a major and wondrous event. I have three keynote speakers: Susan Campbell Bartoletti (award-winning children's author who writes about ethically charged subjects like youth who worked for and against Hitler, and the Ku Klux Klan); Claudia Nelson (prominent historian of children's literature,who can talk about changing approaches to shape children's ethical behavior through children's literature over the years); and Thomas Wartenberg (philosopher who uses children's literature in school settings to get kids to talk about ethical issues). I put out a call for papers to children's literature scholars, philosophers, and authors, and I got a terrific batch of submissions and reviewed them with an insightful colleague and then sent off acceptances.
But now I have to do the actual work of making it all happen. Being still of a fatal do-it-yourselfer cast, I muddled along for a while, but then it became clear to me, abundantly clear, that it was time - well past time - to have a meeting with my fabulous coworkers at the Prindle. Well, within a very few hours, I had a real working budget for this event (a budget I wish I had made sooner, but oh, well), and an amazing color-coded spreadsheet for all the participants (a spreadsheet I wish I had made sooner, but, oh well).
Oh, my darlings, delegate! When you are surrounded by people with better budgeting and spreadsheet-making skills than yours, delegate! Do it before you mess everything up, rather than after! And if after,do it as soon as possible after! You will be so glad you did!
But here is one key difference between literature and life. In literature, the main character learns a lesson, and it stays learned; if there's a sequel, she goes on to learn some different lesson in the next book. In real life, we have to learn the same lesson over and over - and over - again.
I remember that a year ago I blogged about learning how to delegate, as I was cleaning up a devastated property for sale and desperately needed and welcomed the assistance of an army of brilliant, hardworking graduate students who came to my rescue. Delegating is the key to success! I think I wrote something to that effect in this very blog.
Today I learned that same lesson again. I'm working on the logistics for the conference on Ethics and Children's Literature that I'm organizing at the Prindle Institute for Ethics this coming September. It's to be a major and wondrous event. I have three keynote speakers: Susan Campbell Bartoletti (award-winning children's author who writes about ethically charged subjects like youth who worked for and against Hitler, and the Ku Klux Klan); Claudia Nelson (prominent historian of children's literature,who can talk about changing approaches to shape children's ethical behavior through children's literature over the years); and Thomas Wartenberg (philosopher who uses children's literature in school settings to get kids to talk about ethical issues). I put out a call for papers to children's literature scholars, philosophers, and authors, and I got a terrific batch of submissions and reviewed them with an insightful colleague and then sent off acceptances.
But now I have to do the actual work of making it all happen. Being still of a fatal do-it-yourselfer cast, I muddled along for a while, but then it became clear to me, abundantly clear, that it was time - well past time - to have a meeting with my fabulous coworkers at the Prindle. Well, within a very few hours, I had a real working budget for this event (a budget I wish I had made sooner, but oh, well), and an amazing color-coded spreadsheet for all the participants (a spreadsheet I wish I had made sooner, but, oh well).
Oh, my darlings, delegate! When you are surrounded by people with better budgeting and spreadsheet-making skills than yours, delegate! Do it before you mess everything up, rather than after! And if after,do it as soon as possible after! You will be so glad you did!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Try!
I'm working on revising and expanding the paper I gave at the conference in China, "Wimpy Boys and Spunky Girls: The Image of the Gendered Child in Postwar American Children's Literature," for the book that will be created from the conference presentations. For one thing, the paper needs a more informative title, for it is really a paper on the Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby books of Beverly Cleary, which in my view created a certain archetype of a hapless boy who has various misfortunes befall him versus an exuberant girl who is filled with unconventional ideas for irrepressible adventures.
As part of this task, I'm now reading Beverly Cleary's two memoirs: A Girl From Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. As a child, Cleary herself was very like Ramona. I've read 130 pages so far, and in the space of those pages little Beverly has put inky hand prints all over the white damask tablecloth at the family's Thanksgiving dinner and set off on a walk around the world as well as a walk around the ledge beneath her home's mansard roof. In fact, little Beverly is exactly like little Ramona in puzzling over the words of the song about the "dawnzer lee light" and naming her doll after a motor vehicle: a car for Ramona (Chevrolet) and a tractor for Beverly (Fordson-Lafayette).
I've just reached the part of the book where Beverly Cleary has her first success as a writer, winning two dollars in a contest sponsored by Keds shoes for the best essay about an animal. Then she finds out that nobody else had entered the contest. This doesn't take away from Cleary's delight in her prize. Instead, it gives her "one of the most valuable lessons in writing I ever learned. Try! Others will talk about writing but may never get around to trying."
Yes! Success in writing belongs to those who try, those who sit down with pencil and paper and actually put words on the page, and then actually submit those words for publication. Unwritten stories win no prizes. Ditto for stories that aren't submitted. One of my sons once cried when he didn't win a drawing contest he hadn't even entered. Write! Draw! Enter! Submit! You may even win two dollars once of these days. Who knows?
As part of this task, I'm now reading Beverly Cleary's two memoirs: A Girl From Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. As a child, Cleary herself was very like Ramona. I've read 130 pages so far, and in the space of those pages little Beverly has put inky hand prints all over the white damask tablecloth at the family's Thanksgiving dinner and set off on a walk around the world as well as a walk around the ledge beneath her home's mansard roof. In fact, little Beverly is exactly like little Ramona in puzzling over the words of the song about the "dawnzer lee light" and naming her doll after a motor vehicle: a car for Ramona (Chevrolet) and a tractor for Beverly (Fordson-Lafayette).
I've just reached the part of the book where Beverly Cleary has her first success as a writer, winning two dollars in a contest sponsored by Keds shoes for the best essay about an animal. Then she finds out that nobody else had entered the contest. This doesn't take away from Cleary's delight in her prize. Instead, it gives her "one of the most valuable lessons in writing I ever learned. Try! Others will talk about writing but may never get around to trying."
Yes! Success in writing belongs to those who try, those who sit down with pencil and paper and actually put words on the page, and then actually submit those words for publication. Unwritten stories win no prizes. Ditto for stories that aren't submitted. One of my sons once cried when he didn't win a drawing contest he hadn't even entered. Write! Draw! Enter! Submit! You may even win two dollars once of these days. Who knows?
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