Overdue

That's what my ILL book is. ILL is Interlibrary Loan, for those of you who don't have to or don't want to use it. When I get an ILL book, no doubt the librarians at the Cayan Library at SUNYIT know it will come back late. Perhaps our really smart librarian Ron Foster alters the due date in an attempt to actually get the book back from me.

I should have known better than to ILL a book during the semester. I'm talking about Murder Most Foul (no, I don't know how to underline in html), the book I've been reading since March. It's really good, and today I will take it to the library and see if I can renew it. It says on the slip that it can be renewed, but of course it can't be done online now because it was due on May 6th.

In other news, I am a little sad today because, I don't know why, I'm just a little sad. So, if you want to answer any of my old posts that ask you stupid or inane things just to entertain me, please do so. It'll cheer me up.

Happy Monday?

mothers day

I made up a mothers day joke.
hey squash...get on the Yamtrack.
it's a french mothers day joke.
missy smells bad.
I think my mother may be a product of my imagination...
I have a picture of her and she resembles a gumbie. HUMM questionable?
happy mothers day mom.

Mother's Day

Today MNYAGG will have two posts. I told Pin, who is sleeping next to me, that she must post about her mother. Yes, I'm forcing a tribute to myself, so tune in later to see what her maniacal little mind comes up with.

In the meantime, I'll put up a post about a real mom, my mom Catherine Cecilia Lamb Murphy, who:

-- is smart as a whip even at 89.
-- has strength and endurance that have been sorely tested and earned her the name (bestowed by Bighead) the fightin' Mrs. Murphy.
-- had her most high strung and difficult child at 40 and still managed to love me, even though I was a huge pain in the butt.
-- this may sound like a criticism, but it's not meant to be, used to get exasperated and say "Patricia, you have too much imagination," which resulted in me privileging imagination and becoming the cartoon character I am today. Nothing like a little rebellion.
-- may not have been a gourmet cook when I was growing up, but made lamb potpie that was lip smackin' good.
-- wanted to become a nun, but I'm kinda glad married Vinnie Murphy instead.
-- calls me Luvva on the phone sometimes, just like her father used to do.
-- makes me realize that religion can be a source of comfort and inspiration to some.
-- loves me, the only divorced child in the family. I think she likes the rest of my siblings too.
-- was always (as far as I can tell) a caring and respectful daughter. I wish I could say the same.
-- used to tell me to make sure I told people that I didn't run away from home when I was 15, and that's not why I lived alone in Idaho.
-- will forgive me when I call later and tell her I forgot to get her a Mother's Day card.

If you're a mom, happy Mother's Day. If you're like a mom to someone, Happy Aunt Grace's Day.
MNYAGG
--

Spreadsheets

I did my grades on a spreadsheet for the first time this semester. Or did I? As I write this I'm getting ready to calculate grades with a calculator because I didn't put any values into the spreadsheet when I set it up; therefore, it's not going to calculate anything. Now, D says I can do it after the fact, and Martin said at dinner last night that I can put in, for example, my, well I don't know what he said because it was mathematical. So, I'm going to get out my calculator and get to it. It should be fun because there are 15 graded assignments in business communications.

I can't complain too much because it was a great semester. I enjoyed the students and made it through about half of the tenure process intact. But my big news of the day is that I slept nine hours last night. If you know me well enough, you know that's cause for celebration.

My ugly shoes arrived yesterday, and they're just as ugly as I thought they'd be. Which got me to thinking . . . and here's a question: what's the ugliest apparel item you own? Why do you own it? Do you wear it? How do you feel when you wear it? It is conventionally ugly, or do you like it because it's ugly in an unconventional way? If yes to the latter part of the previous question, is it really ugly at all? Maybe it's art.

Whatcha got?
Happy Friday

Missy Update

Yesterday while I was blogging about the bread Missy had eaten the day before, Missy was downstairs getting what was left of a loaf of D's delicious coconut bread off of the microwave. I'm just sayin'. I only report the news; Missy makes it.

I am officially done with my grading and ready to calculate grades, and there's only one day left until Pin arrives. That's the big news. The really big news is that Big Head (or Biggie Head with Fries as I sometimes call her) is 28 years old today. Here are some things about Alicia that I love so much:

-- she reminds me that one can be quiet and thoughtful and still be fun and funny
-- she literally changed my life and made me the person I've become, for better or worse
-- she was and is (don't tell her father) my first true love
-- she knows that I have huge flaws as a mother, and she loves me anyway
-- unlike Pin and me, she doesn't have stinky feet (hey, that can be important)
-- she is cuddly like there's no tomorrow, lemme tell ya
-- she is artistic and creative in ways I am not; therefore, I stand in awe
-- she will always love me, even if I spend every cent of her inheritance and wind up living off her, senile and sitting in my own filth
-- she loves languages, is good at them, and wants to work abroad, and I think that's schones gut

I could go on forever, but I won't.
Happy Birthday, Alicia Vida
Mom

So Pin and I were talking . . .

and she was saying things like "well, maybe you're not paying enough attention to her" and "have you been gone a lot lately?". This in response to the fact that Missy ate a loaf of bread WHILE I WAS IN THE HOUSE.

I'm used to finding a bread wrapper on the couch when I come home, and yes I even think that it's fair game if I'm dumb enough to leave bread (or anything else) on the counter, but that's when I am gone. I was UPSTAIRS EATING BREAKFAST. I give up! I hope Pin can have a chat with Missy when she gets here.

On that note: two days until Pin gets here to honor me for Mother's Day. I am so excited. We have an awards banquet on Friday night (free food and actually good food) and then graduation. Not bad, but I better get through the rest of my grading. Here's an update: papers are done and resumes and cover letters underway.

So, answer me this: am I wrong to deny Missy access to counter food? Am I a bad dog owner who doesn't pay enough attention to her pet? I swear I have not gotten Pedi Paws out in over a week. I walk her every day. I think (I'm pretty sure) I feed her enough. I bought her a toy that is a squeaky dismembered foot (not a real one). What more can I do. Suggestions?

Happy Wednesday
I'm going back to grading

More grading

What are you all doing?

It's Me Again

and I've got a few things to get off my chest, so I thought I'd do it while that woman is busy grading papers. Honestly, she's a beast. In the last 24 hours, she has:

-- given me yet another bath, and now I smell like a tangerine. She says she did it because I rolled in something. My reply: I'm a dog; I roll in things. What's your problem lady?

-- harassed me with Pedi Paws yet again in some futile attempt to get me to acquiesce and become a mindless dolt like those dogs in the commercial, slobbering happily while some maniac grinds away at my claws with Satan's tool.

-- perhaps even worse, harassed me with a hand held fan she got at a school "function" (she's so pretentious that she uses that word a lot) and then laughed when I couldn't help but bite at the whirling plastic blades. No, I wasn't injured, but it's the lack of dignity I suffer when she laughs at me for not being able to resist the contraption.

-- told Lu that we would board his extra cat. Now that's not bad in and of itself, but she told him I wouldn't eat it.

-- and the last and perhaps most egregious of her offenses: she told Aunt Cathy, who owns a kennel, that I'd be coming to visit while she goes to Pin's house for five days. Don't get me wrong; I love Aunt Cathy's, but not going to Pin's house is unbearable. They understand me there.

So, you can see I've got it pretty rough right now -- rougher than usual even. I know she said she was going to (you can tell it's me writing because she would have said gonna. And she purports to have a doctoral degree in English!) post backyard pictures, but she'd so dumb (how dumb is she?) that she left her camera at D's house. What a doofus!

Well, at least you didn't have to read her schlock today. I'm going to go take a nap now. When I wake up I'm going to bite her because I think she's getting out the flea and tick medicine today.

Catherine, if you read this, please consider taking me back to Massachusetts instead of her. We'll put her in the kennel. It'll be good practice for when you have to put her in a nursing home.

Later,
Missy

Grading Papers Gets In the Way of my Blogging

So what's a girl to do? I have two classes worth of papers and one class worth of resumes and job application letters. They all have to be done before Pinhead gets here on Friday. I know it's not much compared to what Clark grades; you can look at his blog, a minority report at http://cdraney.blogspot.com, and see what a real professor does. But Clark's a saint -- or he's crazy.

So I'll post pics after I'm done with a bit more grading. I know people are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for pictures (he he).

I turned my furnace off, and it's 55 degrees in my house. I'm holed up in my bedroom with a space heater reading about the business of social networking sites.

What are you doing?

The Ugliest Shoes

I'm awaiting the arrival of the UPS man (oops, person. It's just that my dad was a UPS man for 48 years, so that's what I'm used to saying) who will bring perhaps the ugliest shoes I've ever purchased.

Yes, along with my knee sock fetish, I have a bit of a shoe thing. Last night's reading saw me in black knee socks and red shoes -- quite appropriate I think. This summer I'll be hiking around in Simple Shoes Low Trekkers, and nobody's gonna deem them sexy, although one of you has already expressed the sentiment that they might be. They are made of recycled materials, so I wanted to give them a try. Simple Shoes has really cute shoes too, but these were on sale and I'm cheap. I walk a lot, so I have to replace shoes somewhat frequently, and I try not to get anything too ugly. I also have an unnatural prejudice against white shoes of the "athletic" type, so that limits my choices.

Well, you can look at my shoes and be the judge(s). Sexy, not sexy? I know how I'd vote.

Happy Saturday

P.S. I'll be posting pics from last night's reading and music extravaganza soon. Thanks to T and her mobile, there's already a shot on Facebook. Suffice it to say that I had a great time, and our readers were fun and funny. Right now it's paper grading time, something I successfully avoided all day yesterday.

On With the Show!

Well, National Poetry Month may be over, but I'll be reading poetry tonight at the College Street Cafe in Clinton, NY (34 College St) at 7:30 with my writer pals. And the Fig Mints of Your Imagination and House Blend will be joining us to provide some music. You should come have a great time with us.

In other news, Issue 5 of Breadcrumb Scabs is out and contains four of my poems. You can download it. I'm going to buy some copies since it's rare these days to actually get published in a mag that has a print version.

Last night Patrick and I went to walk along the canal -- Erie that is -- and I got to see a whole new part of my little world. It started out with a drive past junkyards and ended up at a lock. We saw a family of geese and a log that resembled an alligator. We could see Utica from the trail, and when we were walking back the dome on the old SBU (Savings Bank of Utica) building was lit. It reminded me why I live here, what I knew I would see in this place even though I came here in February for the interview. I'll quit before I wax too rhapsodic. Besides, I have a lot of papers to grade and some flowers to plant.

This weekend I'm going to post pictures of the reading and pictures of my big backyard (if the rain stops). There -- I set a goal. What are you doing this weekend?

"Knock, Knock"

"Who's there?"
"It's Bill, your next door neighbor, and I have your garbage can."

Well, that's not exactly how it went, but you get the idea. My garbage can, it turns out, wasn't stolen. My neighbor's brother-in-law thought it was theirs and brought it in with their cans. My can was near their cans because the rest of the front of my house was piled high with leaves and branches. I almost didn't tell you guys, but I don't want those who read from far away to think Clinton is choking with crime.

Well, this is it, actually two its. Today is the final day of National Poetry Month and of COM 308 and COM 307, the two writing classes I've been teaching. It has been a great semester. It has been a pretty darn good National Poetry Month. To wrap up the month, I offer you my favorite poem, even though I already posted it awhile ago on the first version of my blog.



Visitation

When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,

confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief.
Don't they depend on a compass

lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate

their true course? How many ways,
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to disaster?

That, in those days, was how
I'd come to see the world:
dark upon dark, any sense

of spirit an embattled flame
sparked against wind-driven rain
till pain snuffed it out. I thought,

This is what experience gives us ,
and I moved carefully through my life
while I waited. . . Enough,

it wasn't that way at all. The whale
—exuberant, proud maybe, playful,
like the early music of Beethoven—

cruised the footings for smelts
clustered near the pylons
in mercury flocks. He

(do I have the gender right?)
would negotiate the rusty hulls
of the Portuguese fishing boats

— Holy Infant, Little Marie —
with what could only be read
as pleasure, coming close

then diving, trailing on the surface
big spreading circles
until he'd breach, thrilling us

with the release of pressured breath,
and the bulk of his sleek young head
— a wet black leather sofa

already barnacled with ghostly lice —
and his elegant and unlikely mouth,
and the marvelous afterthought of the flukes,

and the way his broad flippers
resembled a pair of clownish gloves
or puppet hands, looming greenish white

beneath the bay's clouded sheen.
When he had consumed his pleasure
of the shimmering swarm, his pleasure, perhaps,

in his own admired performance,
he swam out the harbor mouth,
into the Atlantic. And though grief

has seemed to me itself a dim,
salt suspension in which I've moved,
blind thing, day by day,

through the wreckage, barely aware
of what I stumbled toward, even I
couldn't help but look

at the way this immense figure
graces the dark medium,
and shines so: heaviness

which is no burden to itself.
What did you think, that joy
was some slight thing?

~ Mark Doty ~


When I met Mark Doty he seemed surprised that this was my favorite of all of his poems. How could it not be? Why don't you all put up your favorite poems in a post, and we'll commemorate the end of National Poetry Month together?

To the Person Who Stole My Garbage Can

I hope you enjoy the fact that it no longer has wheels as much as I have.
I hope you don't let the fact that the clamps on the lid no longer work bother you
I hope you will use it, and you didn't just take it for a ride and junk it somewhere.
I hope you realize that I still used it because I didn't want to see it in a landfill.
I hope that even though the garbage men (sorry sanitation engineers) emptied it, there was still a bag of Missy poo in it when you loaded it into your vehicle.

No, it's not a poem. It happened yesterday between 7:30 and 8:30. And in case you're thinking, no it didn't blow away, and no, the garbage men (well, they're all men and it's my blog. I don't have to be pc all the time) didn't take it because they thought it too was garbage. It wasn't that bad looking, just pathetic. You can tell I'm a little cross about this, can't you?

Should I personalize my next garbage can so no one will dare steal it? What should I put on it? Should I start a business doing personalized garbage cans? Jess, you're kind arty.

I'm cross; answer question 2 in the above paragraph, and it's sure to cheer me up.

Ah, Poetry!

Well, National Poetry Month is almost over, so I thought I'd put up five titles for poems I won't write but that represent me in some small way:

1) My Life With Salami

2) Ode To The Plagiarized Paper That Makes Life So Easy

3) I Dream of Taking a Vacation But Have the House Painted Instead

4) Mom, Missy's Freaking Out

5) NPR, You are Satan and I Love You

Of the above poems, I actually wrote "My Dog Needs a Psychiatrist" several years ago. Missy's still as obsessed with me now as she was then. It's a strangely comforting feeling.

Here's a real poem by a real poet, Alicia Ostriker:


JERSEY TRANSIT

i
That black woman with the extraordinary earrings
Haranguing that black man about the contradictions
Of society, challenging his premises, she's
Been doing it since the freezing Trenton platform
Where the rest of us shivered and looked at our watches.
Doctrinally correct, but
He's tired from work and
He's just been helplessly viewing her breasts
The whole trip between Trenton and New Brunswick.

ii
Father and son in the aisle, the man's
Mouth is hair-thin; nose too; it would seem he exercises
Much control. He is pointing something out
Among the grimy smokestacks of Elizabeth--
Telephone wires? A church? His boy looks aside and says:
"Forget it, dad."

iii

The elderly passenger, the young conductor, negotiate.
The old man puts his
Change in his pocket, leans back
Against the seat and picks his teeth.
The train rattles along, making us all
Fall half-asleep.
Over the brown Jersey horizon the World Trade Center rises
Like a pair of angels
Or a pair of gigantic tusks
And soon the train will dive into the tunnel, emerging
As if newborn, into the mammoth
Starlit City. The young conductor
Comes back again and touches the man's shoulder.

Written in 1989, when the NYC skyline was quite different, Ostriker's poem is something like the poem I think I should write when I take the 167 into the city. I doubt, however, that I will ever write a poem about the NJ Transit. I have written a poem about NYC and here it is:



I Heart New York, Sometimes

On the subway great necked men bend
over their sandwiches, read the Koran,
make the train a house of prayer
while three rails hum beneath us.

This city’s delinquent steam and wreck pulled
out of itself. Uphill in only occasional ways,
it slides not much from cable onto drip coated pylon,
breaks the backs of men who make it shine.

Jesus in miniature hangs everywhere, buffed glossy
with the love of old ladies’ rubbings
in salted bodegas on the edge of the park.

This city's absurdly tilted, disheveled: it's a fire sale
fed when the members of a hundred stunted
alphabets come and go daily, when it’s easy to ride under water.




So, what are some poems you won't write?

Panicky Students

Today is the first day of the last week of classes for my students and me. By this time next week I will have done at least two days of getting up and looking at the mountain of papers I've collected and taking a hunk off of it (kinda like taking a big slice of roast beef off of a, well, pile of roast beef) and reading, reading, reading.

But I can't complain, even though I just did. For all of the nervous wreck inducing moments of this tenure semester, my classes have been outstanding. No, not everybody's getting an A, but the students I've taught this semester have been a pleasure, have been gracious and fun and have put up with my jokes. Not bad.

Gee, I wish the semester would never end -- psych!

In other news, I found a must have book for this summer. It is:
“I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears,” by Jag Bhalla, with drawings by Julia Suits (National Geographic Books; paperback, $13), surveys idioms from around the world. The title is a Russian idiom, which we express in English as “I’m not pulling your leg.” The German idiom for “to have a hangdog look” is to stand like a watered poodle (now also applicable to Portuguese water dogs). The idiom for craziness, in English “around the bend,” is in French to have a spider on the ceiling, in Spanish to have mambo in the head, in Japanese to wrestle alone. In this amusing look at cultural similarities, what we call “a chip on the shoulder” the Italians call a fly on the nose, and what we call “nervous in the Service” is in Spanish like a crocodile in a wallet factory.

Sounds like fun, aye?
Happy Monday
Nick, shear intelligunce, sure!

Flowers

Well, here it comes, more middle class suburban schlock. But for two dollars a plant I can afford to watch the three lovely perennials I'm about to plant die and not feel too bad. I have no green thumbs, but I try in my own way.

My father and I tried to grow flowers and green beans during two different summers. We got about four beans, and the wildflowers that were guaranteed to grow did not -- at all. I suspect I take after him. I, however, cut more things down, or pay others to do so. I have a small handsaw, and I'm about to go attack some branches with it. My handsaw doesn't have a name, but come to think of it Handy is pretty good since the mower's name is Greenie.

When I mow, I sing my version of the Elton John song Jeannie, but I sing Greenie. No, I don't really know the Elton John song, just the tune, and that probably makes it easier to come up with words. I won't share them with you.

Yeah, it's true. I am a cartoon character. But, aren't we all?

Yesterday was NYC Nick day, and boy was it good to see him. He's a city slicker now, but still the same sweet guy who insists on calling me Dr. Murphy.

How's your weekend been? I'm cooking lamb shanks. Gotta go plant and hack.

Happy Sunday,
MNYAGG

Barter Answer

I forgot to tell you the answer. I bartered wireless dog fences and collars for yard work. Good guesses though.

Friday

It's Friday, and for the first time in a long time I have no grading. So I'll think I'll make a list of things that are going well, such as:

I have no grading!

It's going to be 84 tomorrow.

Patrick and I are going on a big hike this weekend.

I was nominated for a teaching excellence award by the Student Association.

A semester that has been a really good is almost over.

There are hyacinths in my backyard.

Missy's freakin' out! (I just put that in for Catherine)

Roadie's getting better! (Cath, Rich called last night)

I think I have a pretty good life. How about you? Anything you'd like to celebrate?

Reading

I recently joined Goodreads, after reading in a blog post that Clark is on it. I guess I figured it would make me feel good to know that there are other people out there who read. The thing is I realized I don't read. Well, I don't read as much as I'd like to. Maybe it's because I read so many student papers and articles about pedagogy and random stuff like the Sloan Report that I was looking at today, but I just don't feel like I read enough, really read I mean.

I get really excited when I can sit down with 20 or so pages of Murder Most Foul, but the thing is I used to consume books like this one. I've had it for over a month and I'm on page 109. Every spring I come up with a summer reading list. Last summer I listened to NPR about what I should be reading and then I got to work writing so that I could get tenure. I think I read two books on my reading list.

I think that not teaching lit courses doesn't help (great sentence, huh?). I look at so much student writing, and this semester has been one paper after another. But I don't read literature with the students. I read psych, soc, and business articles for their research papers.

But all that's about to change because a new summer lies ahead of me like an unopened book. I'll hike, I'll walk, I'll barbeque, I'll see both Big and Pin, and I swear to god I'll read.

Until then I'll look at what others are reading to try to get a shortlist going for summer because I still have my Opal project to work on. I'll look at everybody's Goodreads and E.L. Fay's blog This Book and I Could be Friends. She reads way more than I do, and her reviews are smart and trustworthy.

So what are you gonna read over the summer?
TTFN
MNYAGG

Catherine

has evidently joined the 21st century. Yes, that "Look at me Mom" post was from the irrepressible Pinhead. But that's only one of her many good lines. My favorite Catherine schtick occurred on a seven (maybe eight) hour trip from Utica to New Jersey with Cath and Missy in the backseat all the way down the back roads and Bighead stopping at every yard sale along routes five and 9W. It was the middle of summer, and even with the ac on, the dog was hot, hot, hot. Pin said "Mom, Missy's freaking out!" and I looked back to see Missy leaning, rigid and intense, up against her and panting as if the world was about to end. Missy stayed that way through pretty much the entire trip and a family joke was born.

Sometimes Cath says "Mom, Missy's freaking out" when Missy is basically asleep, sometimes when Missy is slightly nervous. Missy is always a heartbeat away from freaking out, so the line is apropros.

I'm glad Pin is online now, although it does make me nervous to think about what will turn up. Perhaps I will have to block her.

In other news, today is the 2nd annual SUNYIT Meets MVCC art and photography contest and reading. I've recruited several friends to read their stuff and people from Mohawk Valley Community College are coming to read too. It should be fun. So if you're up by Marcy at around 4:00 with nothing to do, come on over to SUNYIT. Tonight is open mic at the College Cafe in Clinton, but I don't know if I can handle singing and reading poetry in one day.

As National Poetry Month draws almost to a close, I'll share with you one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Martin Vest from Pocatello, ID. This poem was the 2008 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor Winner, and I had the pleasure of hearing Marty read it at last year's Rocky Mountain Writers' Festival. It is superb.



MAN ON FIRE

At first he looked nice lying in the hearth.
On the end of a torch he kept Frankenstein away.
He lit the streets on a dark walk from a seedy bar.
When you wanted to dance he danced.
When you wanted to sleep
he was a lamp that wouldn’t shut off.
He seethed and roiled in his body of tongues,
climbing the walls like a madman…
He flickered and snapped.
He grew to a roar.
Alarms went off, sirens sounded,
the throat of his upturned flask
chanting go, go, go,
like a flammable cheerleader,
but you stayed…
His smoke clung to your skirts
and coated the dishes
as he tumbled from room to room
screaming more, more…
You remember the night that you met him.
There had been others to choose from—
the drowning man who sat next to you
groping at your blouse as he sunk
to the bottom of his whiskey and soda—
the rain-maker with cold gray eyes
who stared into the melancholy
of his gin and lime.
But Man-on-Fire never stopped grinning,
Man-on-Fire with his twenty shots of everything,
with his flash-paper sleights
fueling the crackle of their own applause—
And you, parched wind,
whistling like a spoke, like a runaway train,
howling in your body
for a keyhole of quick escape,
for a fast way through the wall—
What would you want with water?




Pretty good, huh?
Who are your favorite poets?