Professional

This is the fifth year in a row I’ve blogged some version of the rows of chairs Keene State College sets out each year for graduation. There’s something about the predictable geometry of neatly aligned folding chairs that I find aesthetically pleasing, and at this time of year, I’m always too busy grading papers to blog something new. So while I’m largely off-line dealing with my end-term paper-piles, I’ll leave you to contemplate rows of empty chairs as another class gets ready to begin their lives as college-educated professionals.

This is my contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Professional. As an amateur, I’m not exactly sure what makes for a “Professional” photo, but given the fact that paid crews take care every year to arrange the seats for graduation in meticulous rows, I figure this shot captures professionalism as well as any other.

 

Tiptoe through

It’s Finals Week at Keene State College and the second week of a new semester for my online classes, so this week I’m doing the usual juggling act while one set of classes winds down and another set ramps up.

Normally when I teach on campus on Tuesdays, I take a walk before my noon literature class: my chance to see what’s blooming, check out the local chalk-folk, and otherwise root for the home team. Today, however, I didn’t have time for a midday walk: instead, I graded online papers and tended to other teaching tasks while collecting take-home exams and a handful of essay portfolios, the bulk of my end-term paper pile being due on Thursday.

During days like this when my to-do list is long and hours seem short, I’m grateful for the carefully tended horticultural plantings that brighten even a quick stroll across campus. Today I didn’t have time to tiptoe through tulips, but I did have time after collecting exams and before heading home to snap a few shots of the tulips right outside the hall where my office is located: a quick trip to a place where flowers are symmetrically shaped and exotically colored.

 

Growing on trees

Yesterday, it was the shoe-fruits of London. Today, it’s the coat hangers of Keene. What do you think will start growing on trees tomorrow?

 

Right on schedule

I wasn’t expecting to see trout lilies (Erythronium americanum, also known as fawn lilies or dogtooth violets, pictured above) on my stroll to the Soggy Sink during my lunch break on campus today. According to my blog archives, though, I saw trout lilies on April 24, 2004 and on April 21, 2005.

I also discovered today that the spring beauties blooming along the Ashuelot River here in Keene (pictured below) are of the oval-leaved Carolina variety (Claytonia caroliniana) rather than the more narrow-leaved variety I grew up seeing in Ohio (C. virginica). I didn’t bother to key the precise species of violets I also spotted underfoot (pictured at right). They were uncatalogued icing on today’s botanical cake.

 

The wheres and whys

This morning I walked Reggie first thing upon awaking, recognizing we both feel better when we begin our day on foot. Reggie rests more quietly–he’s less antsy–after he’s been walked, and I feel more alert and alive after our strolls. Taking a walk makes it easier for me to come back home, have breakfast, and then write in my journal, even if I haven’t seen anything on my walk worth writing about. The simple act of getting out and getting moving pulls me away from my laptop’s virtual world and pushes me into my neighborhood’s actual one, and that’s a good thing.

Mark posted from India today about blogging and diary-keeping, and I posted a lengthy comment in response. I think it’s natural for bloggers to occasionally ask themselves why they started (and continue to keep) a blog: why keep a blog when it doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything? Yes, some bloggers become famous or at least popular via their online writing; some bloggers get book deals or make money from their sites. Most of us, though, do not. Blogging is something we do primarily for our own satisfaction; if we were looking for something else from our online writing, we’d give up, discouraged, the moment we discover New York literary agents aren’t pounding down our doors with book deals and expensive pens in hand.

The only reason I continue to keep both a journal and a blog is I see each kind of writing as being a spiritual–not a commercial, professional, or even practical–practice. I write journal pages and blog posts the same way I sit in meditation: the act of writing or sitting is its own reward. Any positive consequence of sitting, writing, or blogging is an accidental side-effect: a result (good or bad) that’s beside the point. Long ago, I gave up any hope or expectation of achieving “enlightenment,” figuring that sitting quietly, breathing, and lightly gazing at the floor in front of me isn’t a bad way to spend an occasional half-hour. I’ve given up, in other words, any hope or expectation that meditation will give or get me anything remotely practical; instead, I figure if I’m here in a human, breathing body, I might occasionally spend some time simply experiencing what it’s like to be breathly and embodied.

Writing is the same kind of practice for me. After eating breakfast in the morning, on most days (when I’m not in a frantic hurry) I don’t have much better to do than sit a spell while I finish my morning juice or tea. Given I’m typically in no hurry to attack my to-do list right after breakfast, I might as well do something rather than nothing with that time…and scribbling into a notebook is the “something” I’ve chosen. You might reach for the newspaper while you finish your morning coffee, or someone else might flip on the television before showering and getting dressed. I reach for notebook and pen: nothing special.

Were I a perfectly faithful journal-keeper, I’d have no need for a blog…but an online audience keeps me honest. If I skip a day or two, a week or two, or a month or two in my journal, no one but me will notice. But if I disappear without a post or picture for several days or more, presumably someone in cyberspace (I tell myself) will notice. On many days when I just don’t feel like I have anything to show or tell here, the expectation of an awaiting audience (whether they’re actual or merely imagined) makes me show up rather than slacking off.

Ultimately it is that fidelity and discipline–that entirely quotidian commitment to show up more days than not–that keeps me blogging. Practicing anything (meditation, writing, or other) by oneself is no less fruitful than practicing with a community, but many of us are more likely to show up consistently if we know other folks–including folks whose names and stories we know–will be showing up as well.

So these days, I blog about Keene to remind Mark what it’s like here while he spends his academic sabbatical there. The rest of the time, I blog about my environs to remind myself time and again what it’s like to be “here” even as I remain close to home, steeped in the here and now.

This is a more-or-less exact transcript of this morning’s journal pages, written after I’d walked Reggie, made a quick check online, and ate breakfast. If you’re interested in this topic of blogging and journal-keeping, I’d highly recommend Mark’s post as the push that set my mental wheel in motion.

 

Every day is Earth Day

Today was another mild, gloriously sunny spring day in Keene: the kind of day when it’s difficult to stay indoors. During the free hour I have before my noon lit class, I took a walk on and around campus, crossing the railroad bridge over the Ashuelot River then following the local bike path a few blocks into town and back. On a sunny spring day, exercise easily passes for ecstasy.

The stretch of bike path that intersects campus could never be confused with wilderness. Both the paved and dirt portions are leftover from Keene’s industrial heyday when the railroad delivered raw materials and retrieved goods like chairs, ball-bearings, and bricks in exchange. The segment of bike path I walked today passes an auto body shop, several derelict garages, and a series of run-down industrial buildings that house the local aikido dojo, a large upholstery and fabric store, and other commercial endeavors that aren’t quite ready for the prime time of prime downtown real estate. Most New England towns offer a mix of the quaint and the quotidian, and today’s stroll took me past the backside of industries most casual tourists never take the time see.

On Earth Day more than any other, it strikes me that these well-worn sites of human industry are exactly the kind of places we overlook in our quest for the “virgin wild.” In today’s noon lit class, we began to discuss Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the very title of which alludes to the allure of the untamed and untrammeled. “If only I could escape civilization like Christopher McCandless did,” readers of Krakauer’s narrative might wish, “and encounter Nature where she is still untouched and untamed!” And yet “the Wild” is an elusive quarry. Venturing into the Alaskan “wild,” Chris McCandless ended up camping in an abandoned bus not far from Healy: not exactly an untouched wilderness. In McCandless’ mind, however, the mental distance he’d traveled from his suburban childhood in a privileged Virginia suburb to an alien Alaskan landscape transformed even an abandoned bus into a Wild place…as did his eventual demise there.

Perhaps an apt way of observing Earth Day would be to temporarily refrain from fossil-fueled travel in search of the Wild. Instead of jet-setting to popular eco-tourist spots or retracing the steps of Chris McCandless in search of Alaskan enlightenment, perhaps the most green thing we can do is to make a conscious effort to stay close to home, engaging in human-powered travel as we explore the streets and sidewalks of our own human habitats. “Walk more, idle less” proclaim dozens of crayoned signs in the shop windows of downtown Keene: local school children’s answer to global warming, high fuel prices, and expanding American waistlines. Thoreau famously claimed that he “traveled a great deal” in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, and maybe he was onto something. Rather than seeing “the Wild” as being far off and elusive, perhaps we should re-inhabit our own habitats, investigating wonders close to home while making an eco-friendly commitment to “Think Globally; Walk Locally.”

 

Sunny day

These geometric shadows tell the story more clearly than I can. The spring sun has arrived in Keene, and Main Street is bustling with people strolling, sitting, and otherwise soaking up the light and warmth we’ve craved all winter. Sunny days are here again, and it’s all but impossible to stay inside.

 

Fresh paint

The first time I walked up Beech Hill here in Keene, the municipal water tower was unfenced and covered with graffiti. One year later, the tower had been surrounded by a tall fence…and it was still covered with graffiti.

Last week, I walked with Reggie up Beech Hill to see if the wood frogs were calling, but the woods were still partly snow-covered. (In the meantime, I’ve heard wood frogs quacking elsewhere.) In the process of looking for wood frogs, though, I discovered that the City of Keene has finally gotten around to painting over the graffiti that’s covered the Beech Hill water tower since before it was fenced. And in due fashion, some intrepid street-artist has scaled the fence to leave the first of presumably many tags, the blank canvas of a freshly painted water tower apparently begging to be so claimed.

It took the City of Keene nearly four years–from the first time I walked up Beech Hill in May, 2004 until now–to paint over the same old graffiti…and it took some intrepid street-artist a matter of months (if that!) to make the first claim on this territory. As a writer, I can understand the impulse: there’s something about a blank page that beckons. In a season of fresh leaves, isn’t it tempting to turn over a new one by making one’s mark on a fresh slate, intoxicated by the promise of fresh paint?

 

Barn burning

It’s not a scene you ever want to see, and it’s not one I expected on an otherwise uneventful dog-walk. Whenever I hear sirens or see passing firetrucks, I notice whether they’re headed toward my house. Reggie and I were returning from our usual walk downtown when I saw one then two firetrucks racing in the direction we were walking: homeward. This isn’t my house, nor is it is my street, but it’s close enough that when I saw smoke apparently billowing from 8 Grove Street here in Keene, I felt a pang of sympathy for the almost-neighbors who live there.

I say “apparently billowing” from 8 Grove Street because those firetrucks weren’t racing like a proverbial house on fire; instead, this afternoon’s fire originated in a barn between the house pictured above and the ivied wall pictured here and here. According to an early report, fire-fighters quickly got the blaze under control, but not before the barn’s roof and part of its second floor collapsed. By the time Reggie and I happened upon the scene, police officers were re-routing traffic, and I overheard one firefighter on walkie-talkie warning another about the second-floor collapse.

It’s not a scene you ever want to see, especially in your own or an almost-neighbor’s home…and yet, I wasn’t the only one who snapped a picture or two before moving myself along. In the few minutes I stopped to rubberneck, I saw one teen-aged girl snapping photos on her cell phone while a man darted across Water Street, camcorder in hand. On an otherwise uneventful day in Keene, NH, a burning barn passes for headline news, especially once you’ve determined that you, your own, and your almost-neighbors haven’t been harmed by fire.

UPDATE: You can see better photos of efforts to extinguish the fire here, on the Southwest New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid blog.

 

So much depends

On Tuesday, the temperature in Keene clawed its way into the 50s; on Wednesday, it cowered in the 30s, and the sometimes-springy, now-rainy weather has been all over the meteorological map ever since. Is it any surprise I’ve been fighting a cold all week, my voice growing raspy and threatening to give out entirely when I’ve lectured, and a persistent cough occasionally interrupting sleep?

So much depends upon a stack of red and green wheel-barrows linked and locked outside the local Wal-Mart, beside the red and yellow lawn-mowers. During a week when spring seemed indecisive–a season when new bicycles line up beside still-necessary stacks of firewood–folks in Keene need a tangible, persisting reminder that spring, green yards, and bountiful gardens will happen, eventually.

And indeed, as I stopped to snap these pictures the other night, a passing man paused to look longingly at the lawn-mowers, their sleek and shiny forms pointing to the promise of dry, warmer days when grass grows and weeds flourish. Even in early April, it doesn’t always feel like spring, but a soul can look upon a wheel-barrow and dream.