F is for flowers (a day late)

Since Eric and I started keeping bees three years ago, I've become much more observant about the signs of spring.

Bees don't really start flying until temperatures get into the upper 50s. Our hives are in a nice sunny location, so I've seen them get warm enough to do cleansing flights near the hives in slightly cooler temperatures. But the hustle and bustle of the spring hive rebuilding doesn't really happen until it gets warmer.

Even before the trees have visible leaves, the bees find pollen. This year, we started seeing activity around the hives and the first pollen collected (that I noticed) on February 21. Though the hives weren't super busy, workers like this one were pulling in pollen regularly enough that it didn't take me long to get a picture of one wearing her "pollen pants" as she returned to the hive with full pollen baskets. In the wider shot, the snow is still on the ground!

Based on a chart from Wikipedia, I think this particular bee was carrying red maple pollen.

We discovered a couple of weeks after these pictures were taken that the second hive in the photo, the "green hive," had actually not survived the winter. The activity we saw around the hive was probably bees from the other hives robbing the honey from the dead hive. 

Pollen may be the first sign of spring, but it's not the most important. See, the bees are still living on whatever they stored from last year (we've supplemented that, but that's another post). So, what we need to make sure the remaining three survive are flowers. Flowers signal the start of the nectar flow, and nectar means the increasing population can find its own food. 

Today, I saw the first concrete sign that the nectar flow will start soon. Most people probably don't even notice this harbinger of honey in my area. It's a little weed called purple deadnettle. Deadnettle and its close cousin, henbit, are some of the earliest nectar sources for bees. They are growing now in our lawn.

Of course, the bees are still working the trees in early April, and they are collecting pollen like crazy.

But it's the flowers that have me looking forward to another honey harvest and another year of watching the bees.

D is for Dust

It took me a long time to settle on a topic today. All of the "d" words I could think of were, well, depressing. It's the end of marking period; I have deadlines looming; my senses feel dulled by lack of rest and lingering illness.

The best I could come up with was "day" or "daylight." But even then, I couldn't quite make "day" coherent beyond something cliche like "I like that it's lighter now. I miss the daylight when winter takes hold."

Then I remembered this:


Shake the dust from Anis Mojgani on Vimeo.

Before last weekend, I had never heard that poem before. But Penny Kittle introduced it to me and to all of the educators who gathered at The Northern Virginia Writing Project's Language and Learning Conference. Penny used it to inspire us to write, inviting us to grab a line, an image, an idea, a cadence from Mojagni's poem and play. She told us to write fast, faster than the censor inside of us who would silence us.

So, I did.

For 3 minutes, I wrote.

Then, she invited us later to go back to that writing, to play with it, to craft it, to see what happened.

So, I did.

And in the spirit of "Don't get it right, just get it written" the moral of James Thurber' s "The Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," I decided to share that draft here.

Shake the dust. 

It’s for me to outrun the censor who would silence my voice. Shake the dust from my feet and fly on the wings of the words on the page--wings from something grounded. Ground up trees, the ground up graphite from a pencil, make marks on the page that let me know the ground beneath my feet and yet leave me with the wings to fly and shake of the dust I must shake off and leave behind. 

 Shake the dust. 

It’s for the student who fears being heard, who so quietly exists on the margin of discovery, but fears to be seen. To cause a scene would be unseemly. She covers her mouth when she smiles and looks away from my eyes. Her I’s are not strong enough to withstand the looks of her peers who look more like me than like her. Shake the dust and meet us halfway. We won’t give that half away to anyone who will cause it harm. Spread your arms and shake the dust.

C is for Cats

We had a dog, Greta, when I was a kid, and I loved her. But she died when I was 11, and we did not get another. My dad is allergic to cats, so they were never an option. Of course, I always wanted what I could have...

This is Abi from a few years ago. He was born August 30, 1996.

With the exception of when I went to college in Chicago, the two years I moved across the country to go to graduate school, and the year I lived in New Jersey, I have shared my home with cats. In fact, my husband's cat, Abi, has lived with me for longer than my husband! When we married, I lived in New Jersey and Eric was stationed at Langley Air Force Base. Not long after we married, Eric went to Saudi Arabia for 3 months, I looked for a job closer to him, and as soon as I found a new job and a new place, Abi moved in with me.

Amidala was probably born in 1997.

About a year after Abi moved in, and 3 months after Eric joined us, Eric and I bought our first house. We wanted to get a companion for Abi. So, we adopted Amidala from a local rescue agency. The shelter estimated that she was 10 months old. Amidala had been a stray, and we quickly discovered had a gorging problem--if we left the food out and available as we did for Abi, she would literally eat until she made herself sick. One time, she ate so much that it looked like she'd swallowed a cannon ball. That's why we have an automatic feeder to this day.

In addition to being the "lovebug" and always wanting to hang out on my lap, Amidala seems to love sitting on any piece of paper or book she runs across. If there's a single piece of paper on the floor or a chair, she will go out of her way to sit on it.








Eric made a picture of Amidala sitting on his Biology textbook into a meme to amuse a friend. That meme still gets used from time to time.

A couple of years after we moved into the house, I received a message over a listserv I subscribed to from a guy advertising kittens for adoption. He had found a stray who then had kittens. That's how Penny came to live with us. Her copper-colored eyes are obviously the source of her name.

In April 2001, Penny came to live with us as a kitten

Penny has always been an active and curious cat, and likes to be near us.
Here, Eric is showing Penny's paw. She decided walk across a dropcloth where we had been using wood stain.
Her paw was a lovely reddish brown, which you can see near her claw.

Our cats drive me bonkers when they crowd me in bed--they don't seem to sleep on Eric as often as they do on me. My lap becomes a territorial dispute from time to time, too.

Penny lays claim to the lap as I catch up on my DVRed shows.

Abi and Amidala jockey for lap space.

But I love how they meet me at the door, and how they always seem to know when I need a cat nearby. When I broke my ankle in 2004, Penny would curl up next to my cast and purr. I had pictures of that, once upon a time, but they have vanished.

All three cats are all getting to be "of a certain age," and I expect they will be gone soon.

Right now, we're not planning on bringing in more cats or pets for a while. I wonder what life will be like without cat hair on my black clothes or dust bunnies chasing one another under the bookshelves.Though I won't miss cleaning up after them, I will miss them

I admit it. It makes me laugh when cats forget their tongues are sticking out. I tried to pictures of it for years before I caught these two in the act. I've never caught Penny with her tongue out on camera, though.

I'm easily amused.

B is for busy

Not long ago, a variety of people in my social media circles shared Tim Kreider's June 30, 2102 New York Times Opinionator blog post, "The Busy Trap." What struck me in Kreider's argument was this:

It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

 I have found myself too often relying on "busy" as the stock response to the stock "How's it going?" My "busy" status really is "a boast disguised as a complaint" in both in face-to-face and social media exchanges. I'm boasting without boasting about taking classes, engaging in professional development, hanging out with friends, or any number of other activities that gain me status with a particular audience. Sure, I've taken on a lot, but I am the one who chose to do so.

I certainly see that addiction to "busy-ness" reflected in my students' lives. Like Kreider, I can remember large chunks of unstructured time in my childhood, even into my teens. But my students feel the pressure to be constantly engaged. Their hyper-connected worlds never allow for disconnection. They tell me that friends expect nearly instant responses to texts and social media mentions. Even their parents text them during school hours.

I can point to one former student's Twitter time as an example of hyperconnection. This young woman started her Twitter account in early 2011. Since then, she has sent over 51,000 tweets, which twopcharts.com estimates is equivalent to spending 429 hours, writing 140 characters at a time. While I'll grant that this is an extreme example, some celebrities who are considered prolific Twitter users haven't spent near that amount of time. Author John Green (@realjohngreen) has logged over 21,000 tweets in the 5 years and 4 months he has had his account, spending 169 hours on this platform. Actor and blogger Wil Wheaton (@wilw) has spent 363 hours writing over 43,000 tweets in the 7 years since he started using Twitter. This former student has both beat, hands down; she had her account when I taught her and often used it to complain that she didn't have time for other activities. Her "busy-ness" was central in her online and offline identity. Busy is who she was and still is.

In my own life, I've tried to keep myself from using "busy" as a status or a status symbol. I do post busy status updates online, but many of them are the grousing among peer groups that helps us vent a little of the self-imposed pressures. I've also, believe it or not, started saying "no" more often. I'm not managing spring sports events at school, and I don't get to as many events there, either. I'm more consciously trying to "hold a space" as Jim Burke advocated in a blog post that I have taped next to my computer. My scheduled downtime has become more sacred. And perhaps that will help me break free of the cult of busy.

It's a work in progress.

A is for Again

So, I got 2 posts into the March Slice of Life challenge, and then I let life overwhelm me. Even now, my to do list looks more like a volume of the encyclopedia than a list. But I find myself looking to another blogging challenge to help me write more than academic work and assignments.

It's easy to fall into the trap of busy-ness (I sense tomorrow will be an easy blog) yet again. Yet, I know that daily writing actually sustains me in a way that combats the feeling of being overwhelmed. Somehow, the idea of 26 posts in a month seems like a more attainable goal, as if one "cheat day" of not blogging will make a difference.  Maybe it will; maybe I'm foolong myself. But here I go...again.

Slice of Life: Technology as friend and foe

Today, we had yet another snow day. That's the 10th this year. I'm at the point where I'm torn on these "days off." On one hand, I'm happy to not fight with the weather, and I like to have the slower pace I can take at home. But really, these aren't "days off" for me as I tend to work to try to catch up on planning and grading (as with most of me peers, I'm more reactive during the school year than I like to be).  Also, I worry that my students will leave with fewer opportunities to think, discuss, and write than they might need. That's the perpetual fear of most teachers--did the students have enough time?

I also tend to use these snow days to experiment with technology because I want to give students something to do to make sure that we don't lose all two weeks of instructional time. My juniors are supposed to be taking their end of course writing test this week, so I used Google Drive to create space for them to review some of the grammar concepts we had discussed and plan for the writing prompts in groups. I also opened up a space for them on Blackboard to allow them to ask questions about the prompts and to get suggestions about approaches from one another. I suspect some of them will benefit from these online collaborations, and I certainly appreciated seeing them edit their writing to address pronoun reference issue and noting which prompts they found challenging.

Today also gave me a chance to try an add-on that allows for voice commenting on Google Drive. Kaizena allowed me to open students' documents, highlight portions of their text, and record comments to share with the students. I managed to comment on 4 papers, once I figured out the general interface. Three seem to have gone well, but the 4th doesn't seem to want to share my voice comments. I didn't discover this until I had spent several minutes on comments that I may be the only one who can see. And, unfortunately, Kaizena's documentation is non-existent. All that there is are some articles on older versions and a video tutorial.

The insistence of companies to substitute video tutorials for actual manuals makes me more than a little crazy. I cannot always use a video tutorial. Watching a video takes time and attention. I may be searching for a quick answer (as I was today) and skimming a manual for the answers I need is so much faster. I may not be able to devote my attention to the video, especially if the software is one I'd use while I taught. Or, I may not be able to play something I'd have to listen to because it would disrupt others around me.  Videos aren't a substitute; they are a supplement.

So, while I like Kaizena in concept, I'm not sure that I'm willing to devote much more time to it until the documentation improves. I still like the idea of voice commenting, especially when I can use the comments as instructional, but I'm going to look elsewhere for a tool that will be easier to implement.

Slice of Life: New starts

Sometimes, it's easy to get so caught in the day to day scramble that things get dropped. This blog is one of those things.

So, what has consumed me? Well, a new PhD program, for one. During last year's Slice challenge, I wrote about the idea of this program and a meeting I attended of potential students as part of the accreditation process. I loved the idea of it, but I knew I wouldn't be able to leave the classroom to be a full-time student.

Then, on June 3, I got word that the program had been approved and would be accepting applications for the fall 2013 cohort. The online application would be available on 6/15, and the deadline would be 7/10. After a nervous couple of weeks, I found out I wouldn't have to that the GRE due to the tight timeline. What a relieve that was for me, as I haven't taken a math class since the late 1980s!

Of course, I was still in the midst of the school year, which didn't end until late June, so I couldn't even think about working on my package until after the application was available. Starting on June 24, the first day after school ended, I went into overdrive:

• requested all of my transcripts, 
• spent a short forever making my resume into a curriculum vitae, 
• went digging for old academic, professional, and personal writing samples, 
• requested letters of recommendation, and 
• started working on a personal statement.  

I even managed to convince a friend from the Northern Virginia Writing Project to apply, too.

By July 9, everything was in or on its way, and by July 26, while on a road trip, I received the following:

Dear Christine: 

Congratulations!  It is my pleasure to inform you that the Committee on Admissions has approved your application for graduate admission to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Writing and Rhetoric - PHD program for the Fall 2013 semester. The following will assist you in confirming your admissions offer and in getting you started as a graduate student.

I was ecstatic.

I'm on my second class now, and I'm challenged to find time for much else. But, I'm also stimulated and engaged by the learning and happy to be part of a wonderful community of students in the first cohort. The cognitive dissonance of upending everything I am doing with everything I'm learning gets overwhelming at times, but my peers and professors talk me off the ledge. I feel pretty fortunate, even when I'm exhausted and crazed.

The funny part is that I am still blogging as a requirement of my current class. It's just that this hasn't been the forum for it. At first, that troubled me. But, now that the Slice of Life challenge is back, I think I'm ok with having that separation.

Here's to as much slicing as I can fit in!