Choosing What I Love Most

I'm home in Colorado from Indiana for a long weekend to celebrate my granddaughter Kataleya's second birthday. Here is the photo montage that her mother, Ashley, assembled for the occasion:

It's an awfully vivid way to demonstrate how swiftly time passes and how much each second counts.

I've decided that after this semester at DePauw finishes in May, I'm not going to seek or accept prolonged teaching appointments far away. I withdrew my application to teach for Semester at Sea, which would have involved teaching three courses on board a cruise ship sailing to ports in Japan, China, Burma, Vietnam, India, Ghana, South Africa, and Morocco. I still have a commitment to teach for six weeks in the summer graduate program in children's literature at Hollins University in Roanoke in the summer of 2017. But except for that, my plans now are to stay closer to home.

I feel a little bit like Professor Harold Hill at the end of The Music Man, the traveling conman who decides not to flee River City after he falls in love with librarian Marian. "Well, for the first time in my life," he says, "I got my foot caught in the door."

Having a little grandbaby here in Boulder, and another on the way in May, I've gotten my foot caught in the door. While I'm certainly going to keep a valid passport close at hand, escape no longer beckons with the same allure.

I've never been the kind of person who believed that family was everything. Indeed I wrote a post on this blog a few years ago that staunchly maintained the opposite, and I still stand by every word of it. I'm not someone who thinks that on my deathbed all I'll care about is the time I spent with my family. On my deathbed I'm going to be proud of the books I've written and the students I've taught. I have loved being a writer as much as I've loved being a mother, and now a grandmother. There, I've said it again.

But here's the thing. Lately I haven't been much of a writer. With all the work to prepare the three courses I'm teaching this spring, two of which I've never taught before, and now teaching those same three courses, five days a week, I've crowded writing out of my life. The person who gives inspirational talks on how she writes all her books in just an hour a day while working hard at another full-time job isn't writing much at all. I've chosen to focus on what's urgent now - getting ready to walk into the classroom prepared for class tomorrow - over what's more important to me in the long run: writing books. I love teaching, I do; but I love writing more.

So in choosing home over faraway adventures, I'm not just choosing time with a sweet, stubborn, funny, naughty, adorable little grandchild over a full and flourishing career. I'm choosing both the people I most want to be with and the work I most want to do.

I'll still have a heart that seeks and needs and loves both work and family. But for the foreseeable future, at least, I want to love both of them here, in this one place.

Gifts of the Dark Wood

I recently had a book proposal rejected by the publisher with whom I've worked closely and lovingly for some twenty years. The proposal was for a new chapter book series, with four books outlined, which means that technically, it's four rejections in one.

I've had rejections before, of course. Every author has. But this one scared me more than usual. This time I don't have that steady paycheck from the University of Colorado Philosophy Department; instead I have a small monthly stipend from the early retirement package I accepted. At this moment, I have my DePauw University salary, but my past gigs here were as a distinguished visiting professor; given that it was well past time for someone else to have a turn at that opportunity, I'm here this semester as a paid-per-course adjunct. And after this, I ain't got nothing.

Worse, right now I don't have any wonderful next idea to submit. Indeed, the reason why the recent proposal was (rightly, in my view) turned down is that even it wasn't all that terrific.

So I'm a teensy-weensy bit terrified about: 1) money; 2) my career; and 3) the rest of my life.

Then I went to church this morning, to Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church here on the DePauw campus in Greencastle. It's the first Sunday in Lent, the forty-day period of penitence and introspection leading up to Jesus's death and resurrection. I took one look at the church bulletin, and I knew that in some strange way everything was going to be all right.

The service was titled "Gifts of the Dark Wood."

The opening music offered these sung lines:

There's a path, though it winds its way through darkness.
We would choose to avoid it if we could.
We awake to an unexpected calling.
God says, 'Come, there are gifts in the Dark Wood.'"

I love having a name, and such a beautiful one, for this groping, lost time in my career/life. I'm in the Dark Wood. But there are gifts in that wood, gifts for all of us, gifts for me.

Later in the service we heard the story from the Gospel of Mark when the hemorrhaging woman, failed by all other healers, touches the hem of Jesus' garment, and the bleeding halts. We were asked to write down what it is that we need to be healed from, in this Lenten season, then to tear up the paper and place the scraps in a basket by the altar, taking with us one strip of fabric to remind us that we, too, can reach out and touch the robe of Jesus.

I won't say exactly what I wrote on my piece of paper: that's between me and God. But I felt more at ease in the Dark Wood after I surrendered it.

Even the Dark Wood can be a beautiful place to wander.

Little Women Bliss

I'm back to loving my life in Indiana with a grateful heart. Here is one of the reasons why.

 The DePauw University School of Music stages an opera production every year, and this year's selection is the 1998 opera by American composer Mark Adamo, Little Women. At a small liberal arts college like this, it isn't sufficient just to produce an opera. Oh, no. There must be all kinds of opportunities for campus-wide engagement with the piece.

Last fall the DePauw film series screened the 1994 film version of Little Women with Winona Ryder as Jo, which I was unable to attend as I was off campus in Boulder that semester. But last week I attended the talk by YA author Michaela MacColl about her fictional depiction of young Louisa May Alcott, The Revelation of Louisa May (hosted by the Putnam County Public Library, to get the larger community involved in all our Alcott enthusiasm).  Next week I'm looking forward to a lecture by historian Robert A. Gross on Alcott's life and work situated within the history of her hometown, Concord, Massachusetts.

As I savored the campus's Little Women festival featuring the opera of Little Women, film of Little Women, recent historical fiction making use of Little Women, and scholarly lecture on Little Women, I asked myself, "Hmm. What is missing here?" Yes: reading the actual book of Little Women! So I organized a reading group sponsored by the Prindle Institute for Ethics. The reading groups meet in the evening by the beautiful fireplace in the Prindle's Great Hall; the Prindle purchases the books for all the participants as well as wine and an array of lovely snacks.

Our group, composed of faculty from Philosophy, French, History, English, and Classics, as well as staff from admissions, the university science library, and other campus units, met for the first time last week to discuss the first half of the text. Some had never read Little Women; others hadn't read it since childhood; some were reading it yet again as a beloved oft-visited friend. I did force everybody to postpone the topic we wanted to talk about most: should Jo have married Laurie?! That will be the centerpiece of next week's meeting on the final half of the book.

I chose for us the Norton Critical Edition of the text, so our third meeting will focus on selected scholarly and critical essays included there. Our final meeting with involve a Skype visit with one of the Norton Critical Edition's editors, the brilliant and generous Anne Phillips of Kansas State University. In between the second and third meetings, we'll have time to go together to see the campus production of the opera.

But here's the best part. Two of the students in my seven-person Honor Scholar course on "The Ethics of Story" are School of Music voice students, and both have roles in the opera: one as Laurie, one as Mr. March. This week the composer himself is here on campus doing intensive coaching of the students in their roles. "Laurie" invited me to come sit on his coaching session. He sang the role so beautifully and became Laurie so completely before my eyes that I was sure Mark Adamo would find no suggestions at all for improvement, but of course Mr. Adamo had suggestions on every syllable. It was fascinating to see such attention to the details of each breath, phrasing, and gesture.

Now "Laurie" and his real-life girlfriend who is playing Jo (!!!) are going to join us at the third meeting of the Little Women reading group to talk about their interpretative choices as they developed their roles.

This feels to me like everything a liberal arts education should be and offers to me every pleasure a professor at a liberal arts college could possibly dream of experiencing.

Counting Down Blessings

The first week of the new semester is done, and all three classes look delightful. I can truly tell by the first day, the second at the latest, how good a class is going to be. Good classes have students who are willing to talk, but none who feel the need to hear themselves talk all the time. Extra bonus: students who nod and smile as I talk. Biggest bonus of all: a sprinkling of beloved students I've taught before.

The content of my children's literature class is now dear and familiar to me from teaching it several times before. Yesterday we argued amicably over Maria Edgeworth's early 19th-century story, "The Purple Jar." Some students were furious at little Rosamond's sanctimonious parents who allow her to purchase a beautiful purple jar (which only appears to look purple because of nasty purple chemicals inside) rather than much-needed shoes; other students were annoyed at clueless Rosamond herself.

In my ethics of immigration class, we're trying to get a first look at empirical findings on immigration. Some that have surprised us: levels of global immigration have remained constant over the past fifty years (with immigrants making up around 2-3 percent of the world's population); immigrants tend not to be the poorest of the world's people (the desperately poor don't have the resources to migrate); governmental efforts to reduce the flow of immigration tend not only to drive immigration into irregular and unregulated channels.

My eight-person "Ethics of Story" class practically teaches itself, as the students come to class so well prepared to talk, talk, talk. We launched the course with Jonathan Gottschall's engaging little book The Storytelling Animal, focusing most of our attention on his discussion of why we might have evolved as storytelling creatures. Students with more background in evolutionary biology found his treatment of the subject on the "lite" side, but all found the topic fascinating: do we seek out stories as the evolutionary strategy of obtaining cost-free preparation for surviving future traumas in our own lives?

So the first week was wonderful. And yet I'm still so homesick, in a way that I can't seem to shake, despite dinners with friends, a "Janeites" book club meeting (Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - fabulous, read it!), a philosophy department discussion of Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude M. Steele (reads like a detective story, with lots of useful advice for educators), and many other treats. I just miss home. I just do.

I debated whether I should cross down the days till I head back to Boulder for good in May. In favor of the countdown; the pleasure I always get in crossing anything off a to-do list. Against the countdown: the dismal thought that I'm counting my life away.

I decided to make the countdown list. But I made it with a twist. I wrote down all the days until I go home on May 20; I started the list on the day before I left for Europe (134 days left); I'm now down to day 105. Instead of crossing the days off, however, for each day I record a blessing, or two or three: something lovely, something joyous, large or small. Of course that was staggeringly easy to do in London and Paris, but it's turning out to be staggeringly easy to do in Greencastle, Indiana, too.

Reading A Nearer Moon (magical!) by my friend Melanie Crowder.
A chilly, sunny February walk with two philosophy department colleagues.
A take-your-breath away lunchtime talk by an art historian colleague.
Reviewing galleys for my new middle-grade novel with a  young, witty editor who shares my passion for grammatical minutia.

I'm not counting my life away; I'm amassing a list of blessings, with, after today, 104 more days of blessings to come.

In Pursuit of Poems in Paris

I used to begin every new year at a poetry writing retreat held at a convent in New Jersey. What better way to begin a new year than by writing poetry? So I decided to usher in 2016 by setting myself the challenge of writing a poem every day during my week in Paris.

The wonderful thing about a self-challenge like this is that it sharpens your perceptions and heightens your awareness of lurking magic. Each day I was on a mission, prowling Paris in search of something to write a poem about. Some days it would be late afternoon and I'd still be without my poem, so I'd decide to add in another quick museum visit just in case a poem might be waiting for me there.

Here are a few of my captures.


Rodin's Victor Hugo

"Rodin's contemporaries were shocked
by this depiction of the ravages of age,"
reads the English translation
of the placard below the pedestal.
What ravages? I ask, puzzled. Oh, those.
Do you know you're growing old
when sunken chest and drooping belly,
gnarled fingers and sagging skin,
wrinkled brow and hooded eyes
no longer surprise?

 At the Cluny

It's a good place to come
when this century doesn't seem to be working out.
The statues so still and silent,
unperturbed by a missing hand here,
there a nose worn to a nub.
Saint Denis, cradling his severed head,
has had a day worse than yours.
But its eyes are closed in slumber,
while tapestried bunnies play motionless
by a stiff unicorn and his lady,
waiting for what may or may not happen,
biding their time, of which there is plenty.

La Neige à Louveciennes

Wherever they painted, I want to be,
Those Impressionists with their loving gaze,
To walk down just that snowy street
By just those laden trees
Toward just that muffled church
For just this silent blessing.

Literary Pilgrimage: Rousseau

My favorite philosopher is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). By this I don't mean that he put forward my favorite philosophy, that his political and intellectual views are those with which I most identify. I mean that he is my favorite philosopher: it's the man Jean-Jacques himself whom I adore.

I've taught Rousseau in a  full-semester single-philosopher course five times now. We start with his Confessions, the first modern autobiography, which anticipated Freud in its exploration of the influence of childhood sexuality on adult character formation. We read On the Social Contract, of course, and his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, but also his groundbreaking work proposing a "natural" model of child rearing, Emile. We weep over his novel Julie, or the New Heloise, the best-selling novel of the 18th century. We listen to the opera for which he wrote both libretto and score: Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer). And we finish with his poignant, late-life meditations, Reveries of the Solitary Walker.

Rousseau signed his political works "Citizen of Geneva," but he lived much of his life in or near Paris. So I used my free day in Paris to take myself to the Rousseau museum just outside of Paris, in Montmorency, the place where he resided for five years (1757-1762) and wrote the books for which he is best remembered.

It wasn't easy to get there. Rousseau's contemporaies railed against him for living so far from the city that they could visit him only at great inconvenience. Indeed, Denis Diderot called Rousseau a hermit and caused a public rupture between the two formerly close friends when he put into the mouth of a character in one of his plays this line: "Only the wicked man is alone." In order to get to Montmorency, I had to take a train within Paris to Gare du Nord, then a train outside Paris to Enghien-les-Bains, and then a bus to Montmorency, all navigated in my very halting French.

But it was worth it.

The museum is open only in the afternoons. The door to it offers an invitation.

A beckoning path then leads the way to Rousseau's former residence.

I was the only visitor, and I think the museum guide truly had never presented her tour to someone who loved Jean-Jacques as much as I do. She showed me the little table where he would have breakfasted with his longtime companion Thérèse.

She led me to the "donjon" where he retreated to do his writing.

And she pointed out the desk at which he wrote Julie. "We call this the Julie table," she told me. I clasped my hands over my heart.

Two large paintings, illustrating incidents from his books, hang in a front room. "This one shows a time that Rousseau and two of his friends--" she began. "The cherry picking scene from the Confessions!" I squealed.

She knew me then as the devotee I am, and we fell into each others' arms. Well, so to speak.

I loved going so far, alone, with difficulty, to find Jean-Jacques in one of the few places where, for a brief time in his tormented life, he lived happily. Pilgrimage can be a communal affair, Chaucer's band  of travelers on the road to Canterbury. But pilgrimage can involve a solitary journey as well, just me and Jean-Jacques and a kindly tour guide, sharing a sweet hour on a chilly January afternoon.

Literary Pilgrimage: Paris

Our Enchanted Spaces course took us from London to Paris on the Eurostar train that speeds at 180 mph under the English Channel, by far the quietest mode of transportation I have ever experienced. We checked into our very French hotel, the Hotel Claude Bernard on the Rue des Ecoles, in the Latin Quarter, just beneath the Pantheon.

Mine was the room at the second floor (the lowest set of windows with balconies), at the end of the hall, just before the corner. Here is the view from my balcony.

We didn't have the ambitious day trips we had enjoyed in London. Instead we caught glimpses of various authors and their texts as we roamed the streets of Paris.

In Montmartre, we stood in front of the hotel where H. A. Rey and his wife Margret lived as they were working on the manuscript that became Curious George, then called The Adventures of Fifi. When the Reys, as Jews, had to flee Paris on bicycle to escape the occupation by the Third Reich, they had Fifi with them in their bicycle baskets. And when their German accents attracted unwelcome attention - might they be German spies? - one glimpse of Fifi/George was enough to reassure.

 We saw the clock in the Musée D'Orsay, the railway station now turned stunning Impressionist art museum, which inspired the Caldecott-winning book The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the subsequent film, Hugo, by Martin Scorsese.

One afternoon we did a self-guided walking tour of the Parisian neighborhood of Belleville, the second highest point in the city after Montmartre, to enter into the magical world of the 1956 Albert Lamorisse film The Red Balloon.

I should have brought a red balloon with me that day, but I didn't want to embarrass my students.

But perhaps they wouldn't have been embarrassed. We spent much of our time tracing the progression of Madeline and her fellow little girls, who walked all over Paris. We tried to visit the locations where "They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad." It was at the Hotel des Invalides, seeing a wounded soldier limp by, that the "twelve little girls in two straight lines" were "very sad." When we visited there, my students obliged me by letting me pose them into two groups of twelve, with appropriately very sad faces.

And here I am, standing beneath the Eiffel Tower, Madeline cover in hand. Not very very sad, but very very happy.