End of This Blog

Hi out there.

It's a weird thing. At one point, I actually wanted more visitors. Now? Not so much. I know that I have several visitors that have IP addresses that are "too close to home." No more (relative) anonymity, no more blog.

My apologies to friends and family who may have periodically stopped by. I might start a new blog eventually. If I start a new blog and you'd be interested in reading it, give me a call or send me an email and I'll give you the URL.

Best Wishes,

F.E.

Fate Lends a Hand

(http://www.freeimages.co.uk/)

I'm taking a blogging break during my workday; was very stressed about taking this break considering work on blah, blah, blah and all of my other blah, blah, blah other work on which I'm So Far Behind.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this many times, but I love the moon. I want to learn how to take pictures at night so I can capture some of the beautiful moons I've seen.

In any case, avid googler that I am, I looked up F.E. Wright today and found this on wikipedia:

"Dr. Frederick Eugene Wright (October 16, 1877–August 25, 1953) was an American optician and geophysicist. He was born in Marquette, Michigan, and his father was a state geologist. In 1895 his mother took Frederick and his two brothers to Germany where he would complete his education. He was awarded his Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Heidelberg.
After returning to the United States, he taught at the Michigan College of Mines and became the Assistant State Geologist. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1904, joining the United States Geological Survey. He then spent some time in exploration of Alaska. In 1906 he joined the Carnegie Institution as a member of their Geophysical Laboratory. He remained on the staff until his retirement in 1944. In 1906 he met Kathleen Finley and in 1909 they were married. Their daughter Helen Wright (1914-1997) who became a pioneer in the study of science history.
Among his contributions were studies in the military uses of optical glass; physical study of lunar features based on the properties of the reflected light, and the precambrian geology of the region near Lake Superior. At the time of his death he was considered the foremost authority on the Moon. He served as the home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences for two decades. He was a member of the Optical Society of America, and was president for three years. In 1941 he became president of the Mineralogical Society of America. He was also a member of the London Physical Society, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."

Post: Done.

Thank you: To God/The Universe, for keeping me, however tenuously, on a writing path.

Nothing more to say really.

Coffee Shop 2008

I'm still working through the Artist's Way at Work. An important part of the process, the authors advocate, is the taking of "time-outs," a time period of 1-2 hours each week in which you explore something that seems interesting, or just go on an adventure.

I'd been trying to convince myself that repeated visits to Super Target qualified as separate time outs-- if I went to different sections of the store each time.

However, I do have a list of other time-outs I have not yet taken:

1. Ceramics Studio
2. Tattoo Parlor
3. Art Exhibit on Campus
4. University Recreation Center (I think I'm going to sign up for a rock climbing class next semester).

One of my time-outs involved looking into becoming a student so that I could actually register for classes when I decided what class I wanted to take. And even though right now I'm more of a pretend student, seeing as though I haven't actually enrolled for any classes, it's exciting. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed being a student....

Another exercise in the book involves exploring jealousy...you list people that you feel jealousy toward (for whatever reason), why you feel jealous, and what you can do in order to be more of the person you want to be--with the idea that if you explore the source of jealous thoughts, it can help you to understand areas in your life that you'd like to change.

Unfortunately, it appears that I want to have more kids.

So I ignored that.

But I also learned that there are quite a few people on the list that respect their creative selves...so I want to continue to nuture my creative (writing) spirit. I decided to write this post as one small step.

Ever the aspiring overachiever, I also enrolled in imeem and gabcast so that I could include audio clips in future postings.

And now, I return to my regular programming, which is "All Syllabi, All the Time." My first two teaching nights are next week.

Did I mention my dad and stepmom arrive on Sunday and may be staying for two weeks?

Beautiful moment, present moment. Beautiful moment, present moment. Beautiful moment, present moment.

Merry Christmas Baby...

Well. At least one post a month? I think that's a target I can hit, or at least use to motivate me to write tonight. I'm watching S.O. play Halo 2, and every now and then, things flash across the screen like "You were sniped by stinky clamhole" and "You beat down Cash a Nash co." S.O. is playing on line with his dad, who has probably been consuming a good bit of Christmas Cheer.

I was sad earlier, because I hadn't talked with my mom. Today is her birthday. I was all set to ruminate about how lonely I feel, shed a few tears, and go to bed. But S.O. came home and reminded me that she is a doctor, and if she hadn't called me back, it could be that she's out delivering a Christmas baby--otherwise she probably would have tried to get in touch with me repeatedly. It made me feel less sad. Thank God for S.O., really.

So I made myself a really awful cup of coffee with my new coffee maker (not the coffee maker's fault). And I'm sitting here with three books. Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," Lincoln and Denzin's "The Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues," and a Christmas gift from my mom--the 2007 edition of "The Best American Short Stories." A. is spending the night with grandma. She's going to use the wallet Santa brought her to go shopping at Dollar General tomorrow. If that's not Christmas joy, I don't know what is.

Over the past couple of months, I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking, though it hasn't led to that magical moment where I complete a full draft of this article I've got to get out by the end of the month. However, I have had an important recurring realization.

It may be possible that I am a writer that happens to be a social science researcher, and not the other way around. I'll refrain from any romanticizing of writing as a vocation and just say that I'm going to keep working my way through "The Artist's Way at Work," I'm going to keep plugging away at that article, and I'm going to keep writing.

In her introduction, Lamott writes "that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time." She says that she tries to:

"...warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do--the actual act of writing--turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward."

Let the church say Amen.

She says that a good place to begin is by writing down childhood memories "as truthfully as you can." I'll do that in a minute, I suppose. I know that doesn't sound convincing. Annywhooo....

Perhaps by sticking with writing (everyday, even if it's just the Artist's Way "morning pages" or something sort of like a journal entry--or a blog posting), I'll be able to do justice to some of the things that seem interesting to me. Like, the fact that when I was at the Casino last weekend celebrating my sister-in-law's college graduation, even after the roulette ball jumped out of the wheel and hit me in my chest, I still didn't get the message that perhaps that wasn't my lucky day. Or, last night--the experience of watching an infamous, local "Ashford and Simpson" type musical duo perform "Tonight is the Night You Make Me a Woman" at the BYOB hole in the wall club on Christmas Eve....

But mostly, hopefully, I think I'll just continue to have that feeling that Lamott describes so neatly.

Thanksgiving 2007

So this is my first post in quite a while. Quite a while. This is the second time I've written since my Grandma died.
Crazy--looking back a week ago, she actually died a week before I was remembering her death, that's how screwed up my perception of reality was.
Anyway. Since then, I've gotten an absolutely shitty 3rd year review. I've been through an appeal, with the majority of my colleagues still feeling as if my contract should not be renewed. If I don't get two single-author publications by the end of the year, I'm done. If I don't get two single-author pubs in press plus 2 or 3 more under review by this time next year, I'm done. Been a little down.

I've gained a few pounds--not a lot though. I've been to a conference in New Orleans, and I've renewed my motivation to stick with the three month process of working through "The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon/Twelve Weeks to Creative Freedom." Can't hurt. I've done two weeks of morning pages, though not always in the morning and not always the highly recommended three pages of writing. But I'm sticking with it.
And I'm writing this post. That definitely counts as progress.

On the kitchen table:
A buttered three quart casserole dish for the macaroni and cheese casserole I'm making to bring over to my sister-in-law's house
Four packs of shredded cheese
A small container of country crock
My morning pages notebook and the Artist's Way book
A Michelob Ultra Pomegranate and Raspberry bottle, 4/5's empty
My laptop
A can opener

My S.O. and my other sister-in-law's friend are listening to bad 80's rap and playing Madden 2006 in the living room.

I did my morning pages today. I'm glad to bringing a dish instead of hosting. I'm glad that my mother-in-law could take my daughter to visit her great-aunt and her cousins while I cooked. I'm thankful. I'm going to have another beer.

Happy Thanksgiving to You and Yours

Ways that I Think About My Environment

So, it's either today or tomorrow that is "Blog Action Day."

This reminds me of something I've been meaning to write about. Over the weekend, we went to an art festival, where my mother struck up a conversation with an artist who had rendered places traveled in mixed media paintings.

She talked about the process by which she took photographs of places she'd been (on her international travels), transformed them into black and white images, attached them to some kind of masonry, and then painted and waxed the surrounding stone with "lots and lots of layers of paint and wax." Curious, I asked what the material was that covered the lower half of one of her pieces. In a practiced, sing song voice, she told us that she'd used grass from her own yard, covered with wax, "and lots and lots of layers of paint."

It was at that moment that I uttered a mental scream of anguish. "Grass from your own yard?"

If this was not the quintessential metaphor for a bourgeosie upper middle class woman turned artist, I don't know what it is. Her essentialized images of the "the Orient" and French city scapes, surrounded by globs and globs of pretty paint and "grounded" by clippings from her lawn. Of course, there were no actual people represented in her artwork--really, I can see how that might be aesthetically problematic.

My only question is whether she gathered the clippings herself, with a pair of scissors, or whether she had to leave specific instructions for her under-the-table gardner.

Blech.

Yes, it's one of those days. I wish Forest Gump was here so I could clasp his hands, kneel in a corn field, my eyes squeezed shut as I utter those famous words: "Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly away. Far far away from here. Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly away. Far Far away from here."

And haven't we all felt like that? Yes, yes we have. I'm not the first to cite this idea in a blog and I'm sure I won't be the last.

And now, to the other end of the pendulum. Things really aren't that bad. It's a fall day in October, cold enough here in the South so that the leaves have a little color. Cold enough that my toes and fingers are a little tingly. From a mile or two away, sounds from the highway drift by. The cardinal living in the tree behind our townhouse looks at me with his shiny black eye, admonishing me to get back to work. And if that woman wanted to do her part to support sustainable environments by using grass clippings from her yard--more power to her. Right? If I got to know her, I'd probably find she's a very nice person who is, at this very moment, sitting on real patio furniture on her deck, instead of a teensy yellow folding chair that she bought for her daughter at Big Lots.

Finally! The truth comes out. The source of my hateration is that age old sin--jealousy.

(Sigh). Damn it.

Mattie Rufus Wright, 1922-2007

Grandma died this morning. I had written a letter to her earlier this year, a letter I had been meaning to write for a long time. I'm glad that I got around to doing it. That letter is below.

Dear Grandma—

You’ve been on my mind. I’ve been thinking about the gift of your presence in my life. So much is said these days about the struggles of women who juggle the roles of worker, mother, wife, daughter, friend….I don’t have to look very far to be strengthened and encouraged as I go through these same struggles. You are right there. Your life is an example to me, in the truest and best sense of the word. You are the root of a tree that has born the sweetest fruit imaginable.

Looking back on those days when I was putting myself through school by cleaning toilets and washing towels at the recreation center…at those cold Michigan winters when I barely had enough money to catch the bus to my classes, I see things clearly. It was YOUR spirit that kept me going, kept me striving even when I didn’t get into grad school the first time around. It was the spirit you passed on to your daughter G. that gave me a family and a place to live while I worked my way through graduate school. There were so many times when I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it—that I wasn’t strong enough, or smart enough. In those darkest moments, God has been there, and so have you. I am because you are--because of the spirit that you possess, a spirit that you gave to each of your children—and all of them are an inspiration to me. Even though life has not been a “crystal stair” for any of us, we are who we are because of you.

As a child, I remember your son's sketch books and fashion designs, L.'s fancy clothes and shoes, G.’s wonderful desserts, J.’s scripts and my mother’s medical books and dictionaries…

As a woman with a daughter of my own, my heart seems to overflow when I think of the fact that J. pursued his dreams in New York, that L.—with only an associate’s degree—has become the first African American general manager of a department store, that G.—after retiring from her state job after 20 years—has become a pastry chef and traveled the world, that J. has financed her own movies and entered them in film festivals, even while working full time as a special education teacher.

And I think about my mom. I think about how she had me when she was nineteen. I think about how she raised me and my brothers and sister and then went back to school to pursue her own dream. I think of how proud I am to say that age 50, my mother became a doctor.

And then, my thoughts turn back to you, when I lay awake at night and my heart literally aches with the desire to be a writer. I believe that is why I have chosen to help African American girls and boys express themselves through stories. As I try to nurture their creative spirits, I wonder if I am doing enough to keep my own dream alive.

Langston Hughes once asked “what happens to a dream deferred?” Like your own dreams, each of your children’s dreams have been deferred. But we have held on to them, nurtured them and kept the fire going when those dreams were just coals among ashes. I imagine that this is what you did, when you wrote bits of poems on church programs. When you wrote the beginnings of stories late at night after your children were asleep, as you hemmed pants and sewed curtains for your customers.

I am so incredibly proud that at the age of 84, you've taken creative writing classes, written children's stories...and you have published your own book of poetry. Through it all—through working, through raising your children, through caring for Granddad as he struggled with Alzheimer’s, you kept your dream alive.

I want you to know that I believe that I can be a writer, and it is because of you. You are my inspiration and my muse. Your spirit lives on in my mother, and it lives on in my heart and my soul.

I love you so very much, and I just wanted you to know that God has blessed me beyond belief by making you a part of my life.

Your Granddaughter,

f.e.wright