When I see a damaged tree and wince, I wonder: “Is the wince for the tree, or me?”
Tree on Independence Drive, 2.11.2009
We humans can anthropomorphize non-animal living things as well as we can our cats and dogs. Continue reading
– Wound
Author: jelizabeth
– One way to pass time
This is what Grace said, in sequential increments, after I gently asked her to stop reading over my shoulder:
I am just going to lie down on the couch…
and use my mind…
to keep busy…
and make objects move…
and race across the room…
and watch them.
And so I watched eight-year-old Grace, and that indeed is what she seemed to be doing. As she lay on the couch, her head swiveled as though tracking something, and her eyebrows occasionally tented in surprise. Her lips moved, ghost talking.
– Page length
A recent post in Tomorrow’s Professor treats the forces converging on that often irritating but essentially benign student question: “How many pages?” Here’s the lead:
He said, “How many pages does that paper have to be?”
She said, “As many as it takes to make your case.”
This exchange is pretty common, and annoying. The student is trying to set the boundaries of the assignment and is probably annoyed with the vague response he got from the instructor. The instructor wants the student to learn how to make a good argument, and is probably annoyed that the student seems to be focusing on quantity rather than quality. But there’s a motivational theory that might help each party understand the other.
Teachers, read the full post for insight into students’ impulses for this question, and your own motives for deflecting this question, if you do indeed deflect it. Continue reading
– I surrender.
An ultrasound technician called me “laid-back” yesterday. This seemed, at the moment, not unlike other things people have called me, like “calm” or “safe.”
I could turn this into a boast, I suppose, but I’m not here to write about compliments. It does seem interesting to write about what it feels like, to me, to be calm while under stress.
It feels like surrender.
And that is the short, true answer.
But that makes surrender sound easy. And it’s not. The kind of surrender I want to describe (my kind) — to stress, chaos, noise, demands, surprise, discomfort — takes energy. It’s not like falling onto a couch and flicking on the tv. Continue reading
– Embedded
Often, pleasure and work come together.
Massachusetts morning, 2.4.2009
– All facts
I am a slow eater. Or, perhaps I live with fast ones.
At dinner, I said to the kids, “Slow down, slow down.”
I added, “I just read that people who eat fast are two times more likely to be overweight than people who don’t.”
Lydia: “You read that? Where?”
Jane: “Yes. In my Diabetes Forecast.”
Lydia: “So, it’s a fact.”
Jane: “Yes, and don’t you like facts?”
Lydia: “I love facts. There should be a magazine called All Facts. People would love it.”
Jane: [thinking…] “I agree.”
Lydia: “Like almanacs. Have you ever read the Almanac? That’s all facts.”
She said this with a kind of relish, my fact-lover.
And I’m with her.
– Overused
Here are two words I hope NEVER to see or hear again. (This is what you might consider a hopeless hope.)
Honestly, I don’t even know what that term conveys anymore.
And if I were Malcolm Gladwell, the author who popularized the term, I’d probably be tempted to hide under my bed, with my hands over my ears, and sing “La La La La La La La La La” every time I noticed or heard it in use.
But then I might be under my bed all the time, because that term is EVERYWHERE in the English-speaking culture.
Not because of me, though. Right?
– Hail to the, er, crochet
I’ve been wanting to put a photo of President Obama on my blog. However, I do have some editorial policies (admittedly, my own) that I follow, and his photographic image doesn’t really fit. He’s not very Leaf: not a gardener, is he? I suppose I could say he’s kinda Word; I mean, he’s a great rhetoritician. But, still, I don’t think I have anything original to say about Obama as a speaker that hasn’t already been said. At last, however, he and his image — this crocheted image — fits Stitch.
And, yes, I could make this. But I won’t.
*
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Portrait in crochet by Todd Paschall. Link via whipup.
– Eye of the family storm
In the fall of 2004, I participated in a faculty development workshop at Simmons College, where I then worked and taught, on the teaching of writing. There were about 15 of us, and it was led by Lowry Pei and it was great. We got together weekly, we talked about students (in general, not gossipy), we puzzled over how to teach academic writing, and we did some writing, too. Some of it was formal and academic; some of it was free.
I’ve been digging in my archives from that workshop, looking for material. Here’s an excerpt from a 30-minute freewrite I did at 7:30am on a Sunday in November, 2004. Eli was 12; Lydia 8; and Grace 4. As I wrote, I tried to let family interruptions become part of the writing, and so I documented them along with my train of thought. Eventually, the interruptions became the train.
Freewrite #6:
I often wait for the perfect conditions within which to write (quiet, long stretch of time, well rested) and those perfect conditions present themselves to me, or I’m able to make them happen not –
–interruption. Lydia is doing some algebra problems, for fun, that I created for her. She doesn’t get “2x = 24” – that “x” is unknown and that multiplication is implied. She thought that “x” meant “double the number” and she came up with 4. I explain. She says, “so two times twelve?” That’s right, because value for x in this instance is 12.
And I only get perfect conditions about two hours per week. That’s not a lot of time in which to do much. So, doing things on the fly has to work for me. I’m attracted to the short form for this reason, or that’s what I want to believe. Continue reading
– Day one: salute
Walnut Hill Cemetery, January 2008.
These flags, marking the plain graves of veterans in our local cemetery, seem to me to be like the first bulbs of spring, in a way, pushing through as winter hangs on. They remind us to persevere, and look ahead.
I know, I know, my metaphor does not work perfectly, and yet no metaphor does. Still, today I feel the pricklings of hope, as well as the determination of a New England gardener, to roll up my sleeves and make what I can of a new season. What we sow, we sow on old, ancient, and even dead ground, but, still, what grows there can be glorious.
Last night at dinner, the five of us, who watched the Inauguration in five separate locations, talked first about our reactions to the ceremony itself. And then the talk moved, remarkably, to what we should work on, from the long list of pressing national tasks that clamor for doing.
That Obama’s ethos of work and service reached Jimmy and me, two adults with liberal and even leftist leanings, is no surprise. However, that his message has reached three children, too, is a sign of its power and his tenacity.
I got my shovel out. Gloves are on. Feeling strong. Ready.
leaf stitch word 