A Song for the Hills of Kalamazoo

Well, beloved readers, another Kalamazoo has come and gone.  I myself am left packing up the detritus of another congress while I wait to fly home to South Carolina tomorrow, where it will technically be warmer, but not as warm as my room in the Valley I dorm.

As I ponder the intellectual stimulation and affectionate bonding I enjoyed this week, it occurs to me that there is one thing, my friends, that I have neglected to mention about our annual gathering:  the hills.  Ah, the hills!  For the International Medieval Congress, she is vertical!  And to be a medievalist means to embrace this geographic challenge--or impatiently wait for the shuttles to ferry you to your destination.

Therefore, I thought it fitting to compose a little song in honor of the hills of Western Michigan University, intended to be sung to the tune of the fine classic "Rawhide":

A Song for the Hills of Kalamazoo

Climbin’, climbin’, climbin’,
Climbin’, climbin’, climbin’,
You can’t get to Fetzer
Unless you climb much faster
Medievalists are climbin’
Hah! Hah!

Keep climbin’, climbin’, climbin’
Though thighs and knees are cryin’,
Medievalists keep movin’ along!
Through rain and wind and weather,
Hell bent for a session,
Wonderin’ how to get to Bernhard on time!
All the talks we’re missin',
Because the swans are hissin’,
They ate another grad student

This year!

Climb the steps, climb the hill,
Climb the hill, don’t fall down.
Don’t fall down, step it up:
That’s WMU!
Climb the steps, climb the hill,
Climb the hill, don’t fall down.
Don’t fall down, step it up:
Welcome to
Kalamazoo!

Movin', movin', movin',
You’ve missed another shuttle,
Keep them feets a’movin', that’s right!
Don't try to find a shortcut,

You got to walk that wine off.
Soon we'll be restin’ at the open bar!
My mind’s calculatin'
That Victorianists couldn’t take it,

And modern poets couldn’t climb to Valley I!

Climb the steps, climb the hill,
Climb the hill, don’t fall down.
Don’t fall down, step it up:
That’s WMU!
Climb the steps, climb the hill,
Climb the hill, don’t fall down.
Don’t fall down, step it up:
Welcome to
Kalamazoo!

Real Conversation with Mom: Mother's Day Gifts

Me:  So what would you like for Mother's Day?

Mom:  A strand of real pearls.

Me:  What would you like for Mother's Day that I will actually get for you?

Mom:  A hot naked man...yum, yum!

Me:  I've asked you not to do that.

Mom:  I don't know what's wrong with you.

Me:  What would you like for Mother's Day that I will actually get for you and that will not embarrass me if we are overheard?

Mom:  Well, that's no fun.  You've taken out almost everything I want!

Me:  That is a darned shame.

Mom:  I guess I could use a blender to make my smoothies.  Or some pretty t-shirts. Pretty ones, not ugly ones that are all busy or with flowers or something.  Pretty!  Do you know pretty?

Me:   This blender...do you care what brand it is?

Mom:  No, but it should be pretty too.  A pink one.  Or yellow.  That would be pretty.  Yes!  A yellow or a pink blender!

Me:  I don't think there is such a thing, Mom.

Mom: This is my day!  I will have a pretty blender or heads will roll!

Me:  Maybe I can find a naked man.

Mom:  He must also be pretty.  And rich!

Me:  You're just setting me up for failure, aren't you?

Mom:  Well, maybe.  But now you will know how your students feel.

*********
Update:  Okay, thanks everyone. I concede that both pink and yellow blenders exist.  Lots of them.  Everywhere.

Really, you can stop sending me pictures of them now. 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at End of Semester Grading

I bring to you, precious readers, another sad parody of a wonderful poem, suitable for  the end of the semester:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at End of Semester Grading

I

Among twenty stacked bluebooks,   

The only moving thing   

Were the empty pages left unfilled.   

II

I was of weary mind,   

Like a sentence

In which there are three clichés,

But no content.   

III

The thesis floated across the page.   

It was but a small part of the essay.   

IV

A pen and a professor

Are one.   

A pen and a professor and an exam  

Are one.   

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of assessment   

Or the beauty of completion,   

Turning in the grades

Or just after.   

VI

Tension filled the long hallway

With desperate requests.   

The footsteps of the students

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in flipflops

An indecipherable plea.   

VII

O wise professors of English,   

Why do you imagine published work?   

Do you not see how the essays

Lurk around in stacks

By the coffee mugs surrounding you?   

VIII

I know noble efforts

And lucid, surprising arguments;   

But I know, too,   

That the red pen is involved   

In what I know.   

IX

When the exam paper blew out of the window,   

It marked the end

Of one of many courses.   

X

At the sight of a sad dash

Filling a place meant for a comma,   

Even the teachers of poetry

Would cry out sharply.   

XI

He drove over to campus

In a used Camry.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook

The bulge in his briefcase

For ungraded exams.   

XII

The registrar is calling.   

The final grades must be overdue.   

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was raining

And it was going to rain.   

The professor sat   

Still grading.

Oddities on Office Doors

This is a brief post, lovely readers, and like all-too-few committee reports, it will consist mostly of pictures instead of words.

I have posted in the past about my door hangers and how I have gotten completely out of control with them, and as a result, one of you queried me about the office doors of my colleagues.  So today, desperate to ease my aching limbs from the rigors of grading, I slouched up and down the hallways of my building, snapping illicit photographs of my colleagues' doors.  I do not know what you will conclude about said colleagues from these images, but I myself will resist the urge to extrapolate their meanings.

I do believe that there are two hands at work here, one responding saucily to the other

This beast is unnamed, yet strangely familiar

This warning adorns the entrance to the realm of a renaissance scholar

For what, we do not know.

Who, indeed, is not?

The Purpose of Pennies

Today, loyal readers, among many other errands, Mom sent me into the local drug store with a list of candy to buy at half price (this being the second day following Easter, of course).  Most of this list consisted of various Reese's products in a number of shapes and sizes.

Upon collecting the correct assortment of sugary delights, I stepped forth toward the cash register only to be cut off by an ancient little woman with a chapstick in one hand and a purple bag emblazoned with the name of a Canadian whiskey in the other.

I knew, beloved readers, what was about to happen, for I was once a cashier myself.

The revered elder presented the chapstick and then dumped the contents of the purple bag on the counter.  It consisted of 352 unwrapped pennies (a fact revealed somewhat later but which I decided to include here because I am a demi-omnipotent narrator with poetic license).

Now there are two ways a person can handle such a sight, as all of you probably know.  I chose the other one.

"You have quite the collection of pennies!" I said heartily to the aged one.

She swiveled around to glare at me balefully.  "You are buying too much candy," she proclaimed.

"Ah!" said I, "This would be true were I buying it for myself, but I have been sent upon a quest for all this candy by my mother who is an elderly woman like yourself."  And here I presented her with my list as proof of the aforementioned quest.

The old woman gazed upon the evidence, and then patted my hand approvingly.  "Your mother likes her Reese's, doesn't she?  Tell me, dear, what does she do with her pennies?"

At this point, precious readers, I should mention that three drug store employees were trying to count the pennies together.  Some of the not-really-copper-anymore discs were falling upon the floor. 

"Oh, she gives them to me," I answered, "and I use them in my slingshot to kill squirrels."

The drug store employees paused, glanced at one another, and then returned to their task.

"Why," asked the kind old crone, "would you do such a thing?"

"Because squirrels are evil," I explained.  "It is their delight to torment cats and medievalists and then shake their little tails at us.  Some people worry about a zombie apocalypse, but I know that it's the squirrels that will get us in the end."

"You are a strange person," pronounced the old woman, "but a good daughter."

"Thank you," I told her.  And then, because while I am a liar* and a squirrel-worrier, I am not mean to little old women or drug store employees, I paid for her chapstick along with Mom's candy, and helped her put her pennies back into her bag.

Also, I may have explained how to hit an attacker with a bag of pennies as we were leaving the store.  I cannot confirm this part of the tale, for I am only a demi-omnipotent narrator.

*The lie, of course, is that I attack squirrels with a slingshot.  I'm not allowed ballistic weapons of any kind.

Brief Conversation with Mom: Rock n Roll

Mom:  "I must be really, really old."

Me:  "Why do you say that?"

Mom:  "Because I hate all of this music."

Me:  "Mother, you have always hated rock.  Always.   Or since the seventies at least."

Mom:  "No I didn't!  I liked rock music!"

Me:  "Name one rock star that you like."

Mom:  "Well..."

Me: "A rock star who is still alive."

Mom:  "Oh.  That's hard. Wait."

Me:  "I'm waiting."

Mom:  "Pat Boone.  I like Pat Boone."

Me:  "He's dead, Mom."

Mom:  "No, he is not!"

Me:  "And he is definitely not a rock star."

Mom:  "What about the Beagles?  I liked the Beagles."

Me:  "Oh, Mom."

Mom:  "I know some of the Beagles are still alive."

Me:  "This conversation is going on the blog."

Mom: "The Beagles were good!  You don't know anything about good music."

This Week's Top Ten Facebook Statuses

Okay, okay, okay!  I'm sorry!  No, no, in the words of the Great Granny Weatherwax, "I aten't dead."  I've just been in lots of meetings.

Lots of meetings.


Too many meetings.

So here, my beloveds, is a brief post to keep us both going until Spring Break:

This Week's Top Ten Facebook Statuses

1. I DON’T WANNA GET TOO PERSONAL BUT YOUR FARTS MUST BE OUTRAGEOUS SIR
2. Because everything is better in hoop skirts and a corset. 
3. Don't mind me. Just sitting on the roof of the garden shed. With a 2-foot plastic penguin.
4. Mysterious brown squirrel again.
5. You can’t go to a faculty meeting with your starboard coupling off-line, that’s why. 
6.  I may be wrong, but I suspect that the effect of the suit jacket might be...a bit lessened by the effect of the Crocs.
7.  Is this a conspiracy of awesome teachers that I don't know about?
8.  Just another folding chair injury.  I can still squeak it.
9.  Well, a garlic press should be a kind of newspaper.  Or a basketball strategy.
10.  I have sworn not to speak of fewmets in class again.  But we all know that I’m an oath-breaker.