Literary Pilgrimage: The Hundred Acre Wood

I'm back from my two weeks of adventures abroad co-teaching my Enchanted Spaces winter term course for DePauw. So expect my next few posts to be sharing installments of my magical literary pilgrimage.

Of all the days on the trip, the one that meant the most to me was visiting the actual forest where A. A. Milne's young son would set off for his imaginary adventures with his real-life stuffed animals: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo. The Milnes acquired Cotchford Farm in East Sussex as a holiday home in 1925, when their only child, Christopher Robin, was five years old. It was in nearby Ashdown Forest that Milne set the bedtime stories he told Christopher Robin and his faithful bear, Pooh, every night. So it was to Ashdown Forest that we headed for our visit to the Hundred Acre Wood.

The forest is completely unspoiled, "unimproved," uncommercialized, and, on the day we visited, very muddy. There is a small, charming Pooh's Corner gift shop in the nearby village, but the forest itself wears its fame lightly. There is one sign pointing the way to the Poohsticks bridge; there is a plaque in Milne's honor at the top of the forest. But there are no recreations of the houses of the animal characters, except for an Eeyore house here and here, made by visitors.

The twenty-four students trooped along to the bridge to play Poohsticks: the game that involves dropping sticks from one side of the bridge and then looking over the other side to see which stick emerges first as the winner. I had read in a guidebook that it isn't respectful to the site to denude it of every available stick, so I brought sticks with me from the DePauw campus in Indiana, the sticks I'm clutching here.

Our guide, Simon, asked where I had gotten the sticks, and when I told him "Indiana," he was flabbergasted. "You're pulling my leg!" "You have to be kidding!" "Really?" I guess we were a little more zealous than most of his visitors.

And so we played, and I hope it isn't bragging too much to inform you that in the round I entered, my stick did win. (Fatter sticks tended to prove victorious). You can't see my stick here, so you'll have to take my word for it.)

Our next stop was Gills Lap, Galleons Lap in The House at Pooh Corner, the very top of the forest. 
There we peered into the heffalump trap (my colleague Tiffany's daughter, Rebecca, pictured here). 

And there we entered, with hushed voices, the Enchanted Place, where Christopher Robin says goodbye to Pooh at the end of the second book: 

Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out "Pooh!" 
 "Yes?" said Pooh.
 "When I'm--when-- Pooh!" 
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
 "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." 
"Never again?" 
 "Well, not so much. They don't let you."
 Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. 
"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. 
 "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?"
 "Just Me?"
 "Yes, Pooh." 
 "Will you be here too?"
 "Yes, Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be, Pooh." 
"That's good," said Pooh. 
 "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." 
 Pooh thought for a little.  "How old shall I be then?"
 "Ninety-nine."
 Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said.
 Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite" he stopped and tried again --"Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" 
 "Understand what?" 
 "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
 "Where?" said Pooh. 
 "Anywhere," said Christopher Robin. 
 So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

I stayed behind after the others left, wept a few tears for my own lost childhood, and for the beauty of this scene and its lasting power. I took one pine cone with me, as Simon had said we could.

And then I said my goodbye to the Enchanted Place, and we were off to the seventeenth-century Gallipot Inn in Hartfield where we warmed ourselves by the open fireplace and ate platters of dripping cheese toasties, and remembered a boy and his bear, in the forest together forever.

Enchanted Spaces

Today was the first day of the winter term study abroad class I'm co-teaching for DePauw with my brilliant librarian friend Tiffany Hebb, who just might be the world's most organized person (and also a person who maximizes joy at every opportunity). She's the one who masterminded the whole scheme a year ago and emailed to ask if I'd like to join her in teaching a course that would involve taking university students to Europe to explore the origins of and inspirations for classic children's book texts. Why, yes, I would! And so together we put together the course: "Enchanted Spaces and Protected Places: Children's Literature Sites in London, Oxford, and Paris."

Today we opened the course with general readings on place in literature: Eudora Welty's classic piece "Place in Fiction" and another essay called "Geography Lessons" by Leonard Kriegel. Welty writes, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else." She goes on to say that "place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point." Kriegel notes that literary geography "has less to do with the actual shape place assumes in the mind than it does with how the idea of place feeds the imagination." 

After discussing Welty and Kriegel's insights, we had an outing to the Putnam County Public Library, a mere block away from our campus building, and pored over a score or more of picture books set in London and Paris (many more in the latter than in the former, itself fodder for discussion). We looked at the ways in which these books create a landscape of the imagination for young readers.

Our focal texts for the course are Alice in Wonderland, the two Pooh books of A. A. Milne, Harry Potter (clearly the students' favorite), Roald Dahl's Matilda (chosen as our representative Dahl text as we'll be seeing the musical of Matilda in London), Brian Selznick's dazzlingly innovative The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the iconic film The Red Balloon, and of course Madeline, with its twelve little girls roaming around Paris in two straight lines. We'll discuss these together over the next two full days, drawing on some of the extensive scholarly literature on each, especially literature examining the role of place.

Then, on Friday, we fly to London. A week later we'll take the train to Paris. A week after that we'll fly back to Indiana to process what we've seen. The students will will write a final analytic paper for the course, or perhaps take the option of creating their own children's story set in these fabled places. They'll also give a presentation on their adventures to Greencastle children and their families at the public library.

And I'll be able to say, well, THERE was a lifelong dream now come true.

The Only Resolution I'm Making This Year

Tomorrow, before dawn, I start driving to Indiana to teach one more semester at lovely little DePauw University, where I've taught on and off now for the past five years (2011-12, 2012-13, Spring 2015, and now Spring 2016). I love it there so much, but it's always wrenching to tear myself away from my happy life in Colorado for months at a time, and then tear myself from my happy life in Indiana when it's time to return home.

But this time I'm leaving with even more heartache than usual. This time it's harder to leave home, as now I have a beloved little almost-two-year-old granddaughter, and the two of us are desperately attached to each other. And this time Indiana feels a bit more daunting than usual. In the past I went as the Robert and Carolyn Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics, a position that had a generous salary and light teaching load so the the visitor could immerse herself fully in the intellectual and creative life of the university. But after five full semesters of being a pampered visitor, it's time for someone else to have a turn; the whole point of a visiting professorship is to bring visitors to campus. So this time I'm a lowly adjunct, paid per course, teaching three courses, two of which I've never taught before, and teaching five days a week, which I've never done before in my academic career. Will I even have time to attend all the fascinating lectures and enthralling concerts that are the reason I've so loved my time at DePauw?

Heartsick or not, I'm leaving tomorrow. So this is the only resolution I'm making this year:

I'm going to love every minute of my time at DePauw as fiercely and fully as I can. And when I come back to Colorado come May, I'm going to love every minute of my time here in the same way.

That's it. I'm just going to love my life, wherever I'm living it.

I'm going to have fun in the car tomorrow. I have a David Sedaris collection of comic essays to listen to, and NPR on the radio, and I just bought a little Blue Tooth thing so that I can talk on my cellphone, hands free. So I can catch up with old and dear friends as the miles roll past. I drive on 36, not I-70, along the northern edge of Kansas, where the highway is just one lane in each direction, and the small towns of American's Heartland are fifty miles apart. I'll stop for lunch at some local eatery, ditto for dinner. I'll stop for the night when I'm tired of driving. The weather looks good for the entire thousand-plus-mile journey.

My only task for the next two days: drive, and love the driving.

Why I Procrastinate - and How I'm Going to Stop

 Recently I've been waking up at 2:30 a.m., writhing in bed consumed with anxiety and dread over course preparation for my upcoming spring semester at DePauw. I'm set to teach three courses, two of which I've never taught before, and one of which is particularly stressful for me to prepare, as it's a subject I think is so important but about which I currently know relatively little: ethical issues involving immigration policy. I've had months to prepare this course, but I've put it off, and put it off, and put it off. And put it off some more. Finally, three days ago, I sat down and just started to DO the darned thing.

Oh, the bliss, the joy and rapture, when a dreaded task is actually DONE.

So why on earth would anyone live for MONTHS in the dark, tormented space of dread rather than spend a few short DAYS chugging along to make some actual progress on moving the dreaded task forward?

I think I've come up with one answer, or at least an answer that explains why I procrastinated so mightily on designing this immigration course.

For some tasks - many tasks - most tasks? - there are two ways to do them:
1) a careful, thorough, detailed, thoughtful, conscientious, and extremely labor-intensive way
2) a quick, slapdash, corner-cutting, but in the end, remarkably adequate way.

I always feel I should do the former: the long, hard way. But what I really want to do is the latter: the quick, easy way. Down deep, I think the task will turn out perfectly well if I go with speed and ease. But guilt still draws me toward slow, laborious toil. And so I put off the task until the last possible minute to make sure that all I have time for is the option I secretly preferred all along.

In designing the immigration course, I could have spent months reading widely in all the available philosophical and public policy literature to search for the best possible readings. I could have watched dozens of immigration -themed films to select the one or two most worth sharing with my students. I could have made myself into a true expert on immigration - not a bad thing to be, for a professor about to teach a course on the subject.

Of course, if I had taken that route, I wouldn't have also worked on the proposal for a new children's book series for my publisher, or written my article on children's author Eleanor Estes, advised SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) mentees, read intensely for my judging of the Children's Literature Association's Phoenix Award, or sent out so many Christmas cards or baked so many Christmas cookies.

Or I could have taken the route I actually did. I emailed a few former graduate students who wrote dissertations on immigration and are now professors at various universities around the country, asking if they had taught immigration policy and had a syllabus they could share. Two did. Others offered terrific suggestions for readings. I found almost all the readings - journal articles, chiefly - by sitting at my computer searching the CU library catalog; I skimmed them to see which ones would be most engaging and accessible to sophomore-level students. I put out a call on Facebook for film ideas and got a dozen fabulous ones. I'll show in class the one or two with most Facebook votes and give students the choice of watching one or two of the others. I emailed several DePauw colleagues with expertise on immigration to see if they'd come to give a guest lecture and got affirmative replies.

Three days later, the course is put together, and I must say it looks terrific. How lovely not to wake up at 2:30 this morning with that knot of horror and loathing in my stomach! But how glad I am I didn't spend all of the past autumn lost in this one potentially all-consuming project.

Advice to self: Next time, just do the quick, easy route first. You know you're going to take it anyway. You know it's a perfectly good route to take. You don't need the sanction of desperation to go in that direction.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
Take the easier, quicker, simpler one.
And go ahead and just take it NOW

Time Tips for Short Days

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, but lately it's feeling that all my days are far too short.

There's the coming of Christmas, of course, which stresses most of us. I've just finished organizing our church's Mitten Tree for the homeless and caroling to neighboring retirement communities; I decided to send Christmas cards for the first time in a few years; holiday baking has begun. But I'm also facing yet another relocation to Indiana for the spring semester. I start driving on January 2. I'll be teaching three courses, two of which I've never taught before. Ordinarily I'd devote January to getting the courses prepared. But this year I'll be spending January teaching a study abroad course called "Enchanted Spaces: Children's Literature Sites in London, Oxford, and Paris" - how thrilling is that? But it means that I have no time for course prep in January. Course prep needs to be done now, in these short, short days.

I like mixing up my time management strategies, so they don't lose their efficacy. My most recent one involves focusing not on my time-tested unit of the hour, but the even more manageable and less threatening unit of the half hour. (I own both an hour glass and a half-hour glass to use for timing). For the past week, I've told myself each morning upon waking that I needed to do four half hours of work, on four different tasks. The tasks on the menu were a mix of hard and easy, challenging and comforting. I could choose which four to do. And then I had to pick one of those four tasks and give it a follow-up hour, capitalizing on the first half hour's momentum.

So a typical day went like this:
1/2 hour handwriting messages on Christmas cards (easy, but tedious, as the messages begin to get repetitious, so half an hour is plenty - usually I can get five cards done in that span)
1/2 hour reading books for my judging of the Children's Literature Phoenix Award (it's criminal to use a prime half hour of the day for a task like reading, which is perfect for curling up in bed in the evening, but desperate times call for desperate measures)
1/2 hour working on the sermon I'm giving on December 27: my son Christopher and I always lead the worship service on the Sunday after Christmas - I adore writing sermons! Working on it only for half an hour a day allowed ideas to percolate for the other 23 1/2 hours, giving it greater richness and depth
1/2 hour working on reviewing an article on "The Ethics and Politics of Child Naming" for a philosophy journal. I meant to say no when they asked me, but the topic was so cool I couldn't refuse.

Little by little, through the week, I finished and mailed the Christmas cards; I then substituted that half hour for wrapping presents; when all the presents were wrapped, I (sadly) turned to course prep in that slot. Little by little, I finished my sermon, finished my review, read a friend's manuscript, and made solid progress on two of the three courses, with only (naturally) the most heinously difficult one awaiting (I always go first for low-hanging fruit to keep myself encouraged).

It's all getting done! It really is! Now all that is left, alas, are the two biggest tasks on my list: finishing a book proposal for my publisher and tackling that third course for DePauw. I'll need a different strategy for those two, as the half hour system has played itself out on this go-round. But I'm ready to think of one now. And to start baking cookies!

Post Office Lines

Twice in the past couple of weeks I've gotten stuck in long lines in our local post office.

Twice, I had a wonderful time  standing there.

It's definitely disheartening to see a line snaking out the door from the post office proper into the cramped lobby, with perhaps twenty people waiting, each one clutching half a dozen packages to weigh, price, and ship, with one - yes, ONE - window open. I debate leaving and coming back another time - but what guarantee do I have that another time will be better? And I have my heart set on crossing off this postal errand today. I debate driving to another, larger post office on the outskirts of town, where lines are reputed to be shorter, but it's a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive each way, so how much time would I save, really?

I was having these thoughts in line two weeks ago when I noticed the person in front of me was someone I had worked with in the University of Colorado Philosophy Department's Center for Values and Social Policy when I arrived in Boulder back in the 1990s; I hadn't seen her in years. "Jackie!" I exclaimed. "Claudia!" she replied. We talked long and hard and fast and joyously for the entire 25-minute wait.

Then as I was preparing to depart, errand accomplished, I heard another voice: "Claudia?" A woman who looked vaguely familiar had just joined the end of the still-long line. "Barb?" It was someone else who had worked with Jackie and me in the philosophy department all those years ago. Barb had moved to Utah many years before; I had no idea she had recently moved back to Boulder. We all fell into each others' arms. And, to complete this tale of postal serendipity, why was Barb there in line at the post office? Because she was mailing off a special card to Sara, who had also worked with us, and is now a professor in the philosophy department at University of Washington. Jackie and I scribbled our greetings to her on the back of the envelope.

So last week, when I saw an even longer line at the post office, I didn't despair. First, I remembered my oft-broken commitment to myself to stand on one foot for two minutes a day - two minutes for each foot, or four minutes total. Spending four minutes a day in this way is supposed to make a huge difference in maintaining balance and avoiding falls as we age. It's probably the single most important thing I can do for myself at this time in my life, given a family history of falls. But it's such a boring thing to do! I mean to do it every morning as I heat up the water for my Swiss Miss hot chocolate in the microwave, but I almost never do, as I'd rather tackle something more visibly productive, like unloading the dishwasher. I could do it when I watch TV, but I almost never watch TV, and if I do, I'd rather be curled up on the couch with a cat or dog on my lap. But it's the absolutely perfect thing to do while standing in line.

I began to balance on my right foot. To make conversation with my line-mates, I explained what I was doing. As we started to chat, one of them squinted at me and said, "Do you teach philosophy?" Why, yes, I do. "I took your class!" she said. As we talked, I began to remember her, from perhaps a dozen years ago, as she told me that she still had the paper she wrote for me on Plato, presenting her argument in the form of a Platonic dialogue, and how I had pronounced it "charming." She's now a professor at CU herself, teaching in the humanities program in the College of Engineering, with a master's degree in piano performance and a doctorate in musicology, as well as a three-year-daughter and another child on the way (the reason she declined to do the one-foot-balancing as she waited). The 45-minute wait flew by.

Later today I'm off to the post office again. I no longer dread long lines. I can balance on one foot as I wait and increase my chances of a long and happy life. And odds are that I'll meet up with someone fascinating as I shift my weight from one foot to the other. After all, right now I'm two for two.

Thanksmas

So here's something I never in my life thought I'd be doing: walking around the poshest mall in Dallas with six grown nieces and nephews I barely knew, all decked out in the most garish Christmas sweaters we could find, stopping strangers to ask them to judge us in an "ugly sweater contest." But that's exactly what I did this past weekend.

One of the judges was so pleased with her task that she posted a picture of her moment of glory on Facebook:

My sister and I never knew one of our half-brothers, my father's younger son from his first marriage, and we never knew his six children. The brother died many years ago, but one of his sons, discovering that we happened to live near each other in Colorado, contacted me a few years ago to see if I wanted to get together for breakfast. I did. And as soon as we met, truly from the first moment I saw him waiting outside the restaurant for my arrival, I felt a deep connection with this man who is my father's grandson.

Little by little I got to know the rest of the huge-hearted Mills family clan, and this year they invited my sister and me to join them in Texas for what they were calling "Thanksmas." We celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, sharing a huge feast served upon a groaning table, with sixteen of us present (including two neighbors who carried over a table needed at the last minute, and were invited to sit down to dine with us). Friday was devoted to a "National Lampoon Christmas Vacation" shopping trip, with all of us wearing the  aforementioned holiday sweaters. Saturday counted as Christmas, where we exchanged the gifts we had purchased on the marathon shopping day for names we had drawn the day before.

What a strange thing family is. I've never wanted to fetishize genetic connection; I've been puzzled by adopted friends who spent years searching for their birth parents; I've always believed that what makes a family is shared history, lived history, not the mere, almost accidental facts of biology. And yet I love these people I just met, whose only tie to me, before our meeting, was the fact that we are related. (Of course, it helps that they themselves are the most loving people I've ever encountered.) I loved being part of this big clan dazzling the upscale Galleria mall in our loud, proud sweaters. I loved belonging to them and having them belong to me.

When my sister and I returned to our nearby motel on "Christmas" evening, to pack for our crack-of-dawn departure the next day, my niece Rene, the one who hosted Thanksmas at her home, texted me that she had forgotten something and was on her way to the motel to give it to us. Could we meet her in the lobby in a few minutes? We did. And what had she forgotten? To give us a full-fledged hug; the one she had given earlier, she had decided, only counted as half a hug.

There is nothing sweeter than a heart-hug from a newly discovered niece at the close of my first-ever Thanksmas.