Rust Belt Livin'

I just read in the New York Times that Detroit is facing a 25% decrease in population. After attending the Levin Institute talk at SUNYIT the other night, I had to chuckle when I read this statistic. Upstate New York has lost population listed at, well, let's say more than 25%. We have no industry anymore, and we're on the cusp of joining the 21st century of manufacturing. We have an older population and statisticians point out that while people get "educated" here at the many institutions of higher learning, they then leave, often. We don't have high speed rail and so are not efficiently connected to the rest of the state and the region. All in all, the picture seems a little bleak, that is until you stop and think about all of the good things here.

So let's do it. I'll start.

The people here in central New York (technically I suppose it's all "upstate" to everyone else, but we here make the distinction) are nice. They're not dumb or conventional or provincial (well, some are). They're smart and savvy and they possess an underdog mentality that I respond to. They're friendly but not "in your face" friendly. I like them.

Okay, if you read my blog and you're from this area (Justin) step up to the plate. What do you like about central New York? If you're not from the area, ask me a question about where I live (Clark, are you there?) and I'll find out the answer.

Let's do it!
MNYAGG

Isn't Life Funny?

Today I have something on my mind. It's a big deal, and its outcome could change things for me. Oooooooooo, am I being cryptic enough? Well that's how we have to be sometimes when things weigh heavy and are unresolved. Don't worry, this "thing" will be resolved soon. My point is that even though I'm a bit jangly with apprehension and probably smell like fear, Vincent doesn't care. He wants to cuddle, doesn't give a crap about me having something on my mind, and that's a good thing. He knows (maybe he doesn't know; cats are not supposed to understand time) only that I've been waking him up these last few mornings. How do you like them apples, Mr. Supercat?
Wish me luck, even if you don't know why you're doing it.
MNYAGG

I Wrote This

and yes it's a rough draft, but I'm happy to be writing again. So read it, will ya?

Bird Watching In Central New York

One
Is when I get out my binoculars
To zoom in on a cardinal
Eating in a snowless patch
In my backyard, small dart,
Red and determined to graze.
He’s gone in an instant.
It’s March; when the hell
Will the birds come back?

Two
Is when I put on my facebook page
Patricia Murphy + binoculars = your thoughts?
My friends respond: birdwatcher, sniper,
Paranoid. I don’t get the last one.

Three
It’s the butt crack of dawn, and
I am looking for deer, moving
Through my yard and back to the woods,
Silent and graceful like small ships,
But I see none.
I imagine seeing someone at the edge
Of my property looking at me, or worse,
Looking at me through binoculars.

Four
The yard is less snow, more grass now.
I am reinventing myself with spring
Into a birdwatcher, deer watcher, crocheter
Of long and apparently endless chains
Because I cannot turn and stitch.
I am calming myself with tasks that
Require patience.

Five
I have thrown my chain in the bedside table
And twice across the room. I’ve cut two
Lengths for the cat to play with. The scarf
I predicted would be soothing and a gift
For my love should be done by July, if ever.

Six
There is danger in promising gifts
That signify creation, that require more than love.

I found a place to get married

and D likes it, or he is being agreeable. He usually is, strike that, always is. Someday we're gonna have a really big fight -- a brewhaha, but just the two of us.

But I digress. I want to get married at The Beeches in Rome (NY, not Italy) cause it's cool and kinda funky all at the same time. You should check out their website, maybe offer to make a new website and brochures for them. Strike that; I should make a new website and brochure for them and have them take it off the bill. How hard could it be?

But I digress again. The Beeches has some really big appeal: nice grounds, a seventy-room hotel, outdoor spaces, they set up the tent (and I don't think they charge extra to do so), complimentary cake cutting, free breakfast for the bride and groom the next day, and . . .

in the basement room a dance floor and plenty of room for my djs. I hope they take the job when I offer it to them for no pay.

Yes, I'm aware that the long sentence above had huge parallelism issues. Maybe I'll use it in my bus com midterm.

In other news, I have finally reached the chapter in At Day's Close: Night in Times Past that is the reason I bought the book. It's titled "Sleep We Have Lost" and it's delicious, as is the entire book. I'm gonna talk more about them (the book and the chapter) soon. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not, but soon.

I'm also gonna post a new poem. That's right, I'm writing again -- prose and poems. Can't keep an old windbag earnest writer down.

Have a lovely day. We'll be resealing and setting (fingers crossed) a toilet.

I'm Writing Again

I haven't written anything creative since my dadso died. I'm pretty happy to say that I'm working on a creative nonfiction piece. I am doing so mostly because I teach the genre and make the students write so what the heck I should write too, right?
This piece is a follow up to one called "The Fall" that I wrote years ago and that talks about my loss of faith in Catholicism. It starts in Idaho, then goes back in time, then, oh shit here it is. Just read it and tell me what you think. Harold Wyndam was right when he told Jeremy Petersen, Mark Brown, Dorian and me that if you need to set up a piece too much it's not worth the reading.

Return to the Fold

Idaho, 1999
I am thirty six years old, give or take a few half years. I’ve been in a marriage fraught with problems for almost sixteen years and it’s getting harder and harder to keep it all together. My husband has become less explosive but no less anxious. Prone once to volcanic anger, he is now more like a frayed electrical wire. He can’t contain the agitation anymore; he cries sometimes at odd moments. Things on television make him weep, but he remains steadfast in one aspect of our life together. He will not seek help, not with me or without me.

When I say that I want us to go to couples’ counseling, his response is usually something like “I don’t know why you think we need that.” He has also responded “I don’t know why you think we need a divorce” and famously “I don’t know why you think you’re unhappy.” The last one’s my favorite.

So I’m trying to keep it all held together, but half the time I think that like the dam I live downstream from, the floodgates are gonna give way any minute. We’re all going to be swept away by this man’s swelling anxiety. I’d like to say that at this point in my marriage his anxiety comes and goes, but I don’t think it goes much. It stays, but I have taken to leaving.

I go to church. I go other places too, to school, to the grocery store, to an occasional poetry reading. Sometimes I even read my poetry at downtown readings in the small city thirty miles away from where we live. These are readings he never attends; crowds make him uncomfortable. In a moment of desperation I drive to the local catholic church one Sunday. After Mass, the librarian says in a snide voice “What are you doing here?” as if the devil had taken human form and sneaked in while their backs were turned. I do not go back to that church.

Instead I get in the car on Sundays and drive the thirty miles to the small city and attend Mass at the catholic church that is sort of near my college. There is a church on campus, but I know that many of the English department faculty worship there, and I don’t really want to see them or any of my students. Besides I have gotten the idea that since the church is on campus it might be like a catholic version of the Mormon singles ward, where young ones go to look for other single Mormons to hook up with, excuse me, to wed. I am having none of that.

The other reason to go to a parish where nobody knows me is that I cry a lot during Mass. Not sob out loud crying, but crying nonetheless. I am also nervous at first because I think I will have forgotten everything. I soon find out that forgetting the Mass is impossible if you spent eight years in catholic school and went to Mass twice a week, once with your class and once with your parents.

New Jersey, my entire childhood

I go to Mass with my father, my brothers and my sister. My mother goes with her sisters on Saturday night, but my father likes to go to the 12 o’clock Mass on Sunday. He likes to sleep late, cook and enjoy his breakfast, and have the requisite one hour fast before receiving Communion under his belt before we go to church. Even though we go to 12 o’clock Mass we are always late and always stand along the side walls of the church under the Stations of the Cross. Sometimes someone makes room in a pew, and as the smallest I am allowed to go and sit. Sitting with strangers is better than standing with your family.

Mass is impossible to see when you are a) very small and b) stuffed between a brother and a brother or a brother and a father. Most of the time they put me in front, sort of a tiny masthead figure for the good ship Murphy Familia, but even then there’s always someone or some other family in front of our family, and everyone is taller than me. Mass is better on the occasions when we get there early enough to snag seats. Then I can see and hear and actually pay attention.

Mass changes for catholic kids once they make their first Holy Communion and at the age of seven pledge themselves to something they can’t even begin to understand. Christ = bread, bread=this little dry wafer that you must not chew, so receiving this dry wafer that sticks to the roof of your mouth (do not chew it!) means you are receiving (eating?) Christ. That’s pretty symbolic for a seven year old.

This is why I never blog in the evening

By evening I'm boring, so I'll just post this link cause it's way funnier than I am.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/wafflehouse

I do believe

I know what you're thinking after I posted about St. John's the Evangelist, but no this isn't a post about me becoming Catholic again. I could post about my several failed attempts to go back to the Catholic church and how/why they were unsuccessful, but I thought that instead I would talk about my secular beliefs. Those of us who have no faith in a higher being are still full of beliefs, at least I am.

I believe that the world will right itself someday. I think that people want to feel that their voices can be heard and that their lives have meaning. The problem often lies in what we do to others as we seek to have our voices heard. Words can be hurtful.

I believe that if everybody read a good book half of the world's problems would go away. If everyone could just take some time to read about what someone thought important enough to write about we would learn so much. If someone knocked on my door and wanted me to go blow up a building and I was reading a good book I'd decline. Well, maybe I'd decline anyway.

I think that we all get new chances in spring. Maybe that's because every spring the plants in my garden get a new chance to come back and be neglected again. So like the bleeding hearts and California poppies we all get to come back in spring and flower again.

I believe that we can make the best of all sorts of situations even when they turn out so unexpectedly different than we thought they would. After all, I once thought I'd be an elementary school teacher in Idaho and that didn't turn out as expected. It turned out better.

I also believe that if you have good friends who want to spend time with you, you should consider yourself the luckiest person in the world. If you have a family that loves you you're doubly blessed, but we can make families. The word means all kinds of things.

I believe that I'd better see the beginnings of a new poem soon, or I'm going to get nervous. I haven't written a thing since, oh my, since my dad died. Better get on that.

So that in a nutshell is what's on my mind today, oh that and this:

How Fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

Yes, that's George Herbert writing about spring in his poem "The Flower". Who would have thought my shriveled heart could have recovered greenness? Well me because I think we all get new chances in spring, right? Apparently so did George Herbert.
Happy Spring!
It's coming, I swear
MNYAGG

Ten Things I Love About Daryl Lee, Birthday Boy

1) Daryl Lee has hella sexy hair.
2) Daryl Lee reads the newspaper to my mother.
3) Daryl Lee put up with Missy for seven years and even loved her.
4) Daryl Lee has put up with me for over seven years and will marry me next summer.
5) Daryl Lee said yes when I asked him to marry me at the Paramus, NJ IKEA store.
6) Daryl Lee will let me live in his house next year.
7) Daryl Lee is kind to his parents.
8) Daryl Lee is brilliant; at least he seems pretty smart when I let him get a word in.
9) Daryl Lee is too tall, but I love him anyway.
10) Daryl Lee loves his pets, Sophie and Vincent.
P.S. Those are Daryl Lee's legs to the right. So . . .
11) Daryl Lee has great legs.

Yeah, I get it

If everybody lived forever the world would sink under the weight of so many people (and pets). I get that. But right now I do feel like I'm a bit surrounded by the presence of, well, death. I'm sitting in the living room at my mother's house in Bergenfield, NJ where my father died last summer and where my dog died over Christmas break. My mother is sitting close by and I have to say that the last few days with her have been rough. My dad's 100th birthday on Thursday, the one he didn't live to see, has taken its toll on her.

Last night I went to a Mass in honor of my Aunt Eleanor's death twelve years ago. I carried the communion up to the priest with Aunt Grace, and I even received communion, something I was able to do because the Mass had started with Confession.

As I sat, knelt and stood in the pew at St. John the Evangelist Church I thought about how much of my family's lives has taken place in that church. I was baptized there, received my First Holy Communion and made my Confirmation there. My aunt and my sister were married there, my grandfather, aunt and father had their funerals there. My mother's funeral will be there too. So much joy and sadness in one church. So much of my life has been connected to a place I rarely visit.

Enough! The sun is out here in New Jersey and I am done with my grading, for now. Winter's on the wane and I see the smallest buds on the trees in my mother's backyard. There is even a new tree in the yard that I swear wasn't there last fall. We will all be okay because that's what we have to be. That's what we do.

After this semester in over in late April it will be wedding planning time in earnest. Weddings apparently don't plan themselves. Neither Daryl nor I have ever planned a wedding and boy is there a lot to do! More to come, such as date, music, invitations, etc. soon.

Have a lovely spring wherever you are.
MNYAGG

Winter . . .

you are on the wane and might as well admit it! Ha!

In other news, I'm sad to say that my alma mater made the front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I hope everyone's okay.
http://chronicle.com/article/State-Board-of-Education/126437/

Well, well, well . . .

we meet again my blog. Here I sit in my office at home (red walls, gold trim) watching yet another snowfall in central New York. Winter started early this year, I swear it's not my imagination, and now it's wearing thinner and thinner with each new storm. In fact, I think it snows a little every day. There are huge piles of snow everywhere, and I'm even past the point where I want to take pictures. I will, however, say that my spirits are pretty good, considering that I'm usually the one who complains more about winter than anybody I know. I actually found myself saying to Aunt Grace today that even though it's snowing right now that means that the temperature is above zero, so I'm optimistic.

Is it the yoga? Not likely since I talk about doing it more than I actually do it. Is it the prescription vitamin D? Perhaps. I can tell you one thing; it's not because of the great nights' sleeps I'm getting. Winter insomnia and I are at it again, but we're comfortable companions this winter.

There are simple things I'm okay with, and that seems to be making a difference. I am happy that I don't have to worry about Missy lying down in the snow and refusing to come in, happy that she didn't suffer, and after the initial adjustment happy to have her ashes here in the house.

I am learning that we can't, try as we might, hold on to everything with an anxiety-riddled grip. We have to let some things go because if we don't they build up like plaque (pardon the shitty dental metaphor, but I've got a lot of dental work coming up relatively soon).

For me, it's a pretty good time overall. I'm winding down the days of living in this old house and starting to think about where and when and how we can pull off this wedding thing. All I really know is (and maybe this is the Valentine's Day talkin') that I'm gonna be somebody's wife again and I think that's pretty damn cool . . .

except for the scary parts, that is. You didn't think I'd changed that much, did you?

Alright, namaste m'f fers. I gotta go do some yoga.

Try It Now and Save!!!!

That's how I feel about blogging. If I try it now it might save me, not that I'm depressed but I am in that sort of state where I worry about whining. But I do want to try and catch you up, my faithful followers (ha ha! Really could anybody possibly even check this thing any more?). So here goes:

1) I miss Missy but it's getting easier, that is until some dog barks or I go to the store and see dog toys. I loved that dog! Still do.

2) Sophie (Daryl's cat) and Vincent (my cat) are getting to know each other and are now separated only by a screen (pics soon, Daryl took some with his phone).

3) Insomnia level: code orange. Up at 4:00 some mornings (not too bad) 2:00 some mornings (not too good).

4) Thanks to 3 I am sending out poems to all kinds of places, which makes me so happy. Speaking of which,

5) Bighead will be moving here to live with mommy in August. I'm deliriously happy about that.

Sometimes I think Missy's gonna come back, I guess because she died in NJ and her ashes are still there. It's like she's out in the backyard and I forgot to let her in sometimes. I hope that passes because when it happens I have a terrible second of fear and dread that I left my ancient dog outside.

Welcome back to the go go, if you're still out there, that is.

LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME

Well I'm ack again, and to get ack into the swing of logging I'll do a list of things that are going on in my little world:
the b key on my keyoard does not apparently want to work too well
i have a cold, ut will remain undaunted y it
today is my rockstar roommate's irthday
my cat keeps getting fluffier y the day -- pictures soon
it took me two weeks to grade my usiness students' papers -- my worst turnaround time yet
i will not assign a paper that requires my usiness writers summarize articles of their choice again ecause i can't read that many (44) articles (especially from overachievers like you justin).
i am not looking forward to winter (as usual) ut think that hanging purple sheers in the living room will help; your thoughts?
as we approach the first holiday without my father, i am resolved to make it a good one, despite the fact that i miss him so.
i resolve also to reduce complaints aout the haircut that the very nice and well intentioned tacy gave me y 40%.
i resolve to look at the positive result that came from the aovementioned haircut. i learned the following new term: Mullshit: (Advanced term)When it's clearly NOT a mullet. Example: Yer hangin' out at Del Taco and and yer friend says, "Look at that mull" and it's obviously not.

that's it for now. have a lovely weekend. oh, one more thing: i think i'll try saying weekend like someone from scotland all weekend, y placing more emphasis on the second syllable than i normally would. why don't you try it too and let me know how it goes? note: if you're from scotland, oviously you could try the experiment in reverse.

no justin i'm not heavily medicated, just ridiculous.
have a great weekend.
mnyagg

Hello World

My back pain is subsiding again, as is the crazy all over body pain. Since it's the weekend I'm gonna go overdo now, which sadly for me means vacuuming the house. Oh, strange new world that has such appliances in't!

A rant about insurance companies . . .

well just mine. How is it that in the same 24 hour period I can have to learn about and absorb the following:
1) My insurance company has sent my ob/gyn a list of patients who did not act on their mammogram prescriptions, along with instructions to call said patients and guilt trip them, and
2) I will have to decide how much I can afford (out of pocket) I will be willing to pay for acupuncture just because the acupuncturist (who is smart and knowledgeable) is not credentialed in a way my insurance company recognizes.

Okay, before I go any further I need to caveat: yes, mammograms are good for everybody. Yes, there is always a chance that people who aren't D.O.s or M.D.s might be incompetent. But somehow that doesn't mean much when right now at this the technologically advanced 21st century of medicine, I still can't walk in the morning and I missed two days of work. To a closet puritan like me, that's egregious to put it mildly.

Since I like to keep my rants brief and since computing bothers my back, I'll close now. I do feel better. Thanks blog.

Dear Blog,

Sometimes I truly wish that you occupied that place in my life you used to, back in the day. But I've been thinking this morning about how different things are now than they used to be back then, and I think sometimes that my new life just doesn't allow for the kind of emotional engagement you used to make me want to commit to.

Another big problem is that you represent for me the kind of engagement that requires (at least in my mind) some optimism and psychic wherewithall that I just don't have right now. I fear that if I feed you too many posts I'll have to face the cringing whiny pessimist you reveal all too clearly to me that I've become.

And, yes blog, I know that this state and status is temporary. I know too that it's created and fed by chronic pain and things like looking at my fingers and finding out that somewhere along the line two of them have become misshapen by arthritis. See what I mean about whiny?

So, it appears that for now the options are clear:
a) stop blogging-whiny little bitch
b) blog and whine and blog and whine with the full speed ahead narcissism I know I'm fully capable of
c) blog about the positive aspects of having chronic pain and my active search for help from various medical and "pseudo" medical"
d) replace "positive" (above, c) with negative, even though it becomes a restating of a).
e) lay off blogging for awhile
Which will I choose? Who knows? For now, I gotta go cozy up to my Saunders Lumbar traction machine.
MNYAGG

My Thoughts on Having a Wedding . . .

1) It still scares me, but much less than it used to.
2) I'm pretty darn excited that I'm gonna do it.
3) I can't imagine making all those wedding planning decisions because it took me I dunno maybe a year to decide on the paint for my upstairs bedroom. Also I've never been a bride at a real wedding before, much less a frumpy middle aged one.
4) One thing I know I want -- kazoos for everybody.

In short, my thoughts on the reorganization of SUNYIT

There are some great opportunities for humor in my work place; let's face it sometimes we laugh to avoid the alternative. In this the first throes of my school's restructure, I feel like going to work is almost surreal. There are all the everyday things like what will I do when I actually need some more chalk (insert legal pads, insert dry erase markers, insert staples), and there are the more abstract things like wow I felt bad for the adjuncts I talked to yesterday who somehow hadn't been told that they actually have two mailboxes now, one in an at that time yet to be disclosed location.

So for many agita seems to reign supreme at the SUNY Institute of Technology, whether it be about the semantics of our new transitional place of work or about the political intrigue that inevitably accompanies such an undertaking. As for me, I seem to be turning to the sense of humor that has gotten me through so many things, as evidenced by the following email I sent to the print shop last week asking for copies of my syllabi. The recipient's name has been left out to protect his/her anonymity. It went like this:

Subject: Knock, Knock . . .
(and in the body of the text): Who's there?
Orange
Orange who?
Orange you glad the faculty are back to drive you crazy?

Okay, so it's not that funny in the retelling; frankly it wasn't that funny to begin with. But it is my hope that this semester I can find some way to step out of the line of fire from people who might (understandably) get worked into a lather at the drop of a hat. My students just don't need an hysterical teacher.

One of the things I'll be doing to relieve stress is attending the following events at The Other Side on Genesee St. in Utica next door to Cafe Domenico:

Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 7:30 p.m. The Imagining America series that brings in scholars from Hamilton College into the city to give talks, Chautauqua-style, from their areas of expertise, especially the humanities and arts. The 3rd season is to be launched with a talk by Peter Cannavo, associate professor of Government, titled "Green Citizenship: Environmentalism and Civic Virtue in an Age of Oil Spills and Tea Parties."

Sunday, 9/19/10 6:30-8:30 p.m. Climate Change Forum with Ken Mazlen. Cal Ken, 734-9076 for more information. This forum will be held regularly on third Sundays each month.

There are a ton of things to do at The Other Side, so if you want to either escape or engage check it out. Personally, I plan to do both.

In other news: Coming soon to the Factory Times Issue One, an in depth article about SUNYIT's restructure. I don't know about you all, but I can't wait. Jess, I'm gonna need that game night to start SOON.

Coming soon to MNYAGG: what do students in Dr. Murphy's business communications and creative writing classes say about the new "system" at their school?




Subject

Chronic Pain

Yep, that's me sometimes. And sometimes it's because of the aforementioned title. If you know me more than casually, you know that I live with chronic pain from what I sometimes call the triumvirate of evil: fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. I know the last ailment in that group is supposed to be painless, but I think it's responsible for the weak hollow feeling that I swear resides in my bones and not in my muscles.

And if you know me in person, you know that while I do talk about pain, sometimesit seems to me ad nauseum, I am also loathe to accept it, to call it for example "my pain".

But it is my pain, and chronic pain changes the way we live our lives. The facts are these: one, while there are places in my body that always hurt every day (neck, lower back and feet) there are also places that hurt intermittently; two, if I talked about pain, that would seem to me linguistically imprecise because it's the combination of types of pain(s) (stinging, aching, and sharp) that really kicks my butt, so to speak; finally, the problem of pain is, for me, compounded by things like my hands and feet don't work in the morning, so I stumble around and drop things a lot.

What I'm doing about it:
Well, I get a Boniva shot every three months. I take Zyflamend, CoQ10 and calcium every day and even tried Savella until the side effects became unbearable. I take ibuprophen and acetaminophen together when it's impossible to function without it. I stretch and try to do yoga, but I've given up walking for now because it makes my legs hurt too much the next day.

What I'm going to do about it:
I'm going to start acupuncture and in November I'm going to a neurologist my rheumatologist is sending me to.

I have recently learned that even though I thought bizarre cross doctor situations were little more than fodder for internet discussion groups and lifetime movies, you can (well, I can) become embroiled in some ridiculousness. My general practitioner, I found out recently, does not believe in rheumatologists or fibromyalgia. So I was treated to a lecture, just what I needed. My rheumatologist's physicians assistant seemed cranky at best the last time I was there a month or so ago and blamed everything on the "fibro". Everything that is until we got to the part where I said my feet won't hold me up first thing in the morning.

What I feel about writing this right:
Yeah, I feel like a whiner; I admit it. I would like to be the same woman who was able to ignore chronic pain for the 15 or so years I've had it, but it just didn't hurt so damn badly then. Maybe all that "ignorance" is part of why my pain has now become so hard to manage.

Why I'm writing this right now:
Well I was hoping that maybe someone would do a google search, see this blog, and read this and get some information about what I'm doing to keep afloat.
Murf

Essay: The Love of Old Houses

I went back to work yesterday, that is to do the teaching part. I was worried that I would fall apart if somebody expressed his/her condolences. And by mid morning somebody did. And it was okay. And it made me think, really think, about that word that Mark Doty uses as the centerpiece of "Essay: The Love of Old Houses", the word "dwelling".

This one word with its multiple meanings is a source of comfort for Doty as he mourns the death of his longtime partner Wally Roberts. Published in 2002, the poem has been a source (no pun intended even though the book that contains it is titled Source, honest)of comfort for me as I've transitioned from west to east, from one old house to another, giving up so much and acquiring so much in the process.

The problem for me is that "dwelling" also means thinking too much when I stay in my dwelling too much. And that means hashing and rehashing all the sad and frustrating things that have come down the pike over the last few years.

But guess what?

I made it.

I talked to approximately 67 students in the course of nine hours, and we had a blast.

I went home and reread a letter from a student thanking me for all I'd done for her and remembered how easy and natural it was for me to help shape her education and how lucky I was to be able to do so.

If this post seems scattered and disorganized I guess it's because it's one of those times when I can't really tell you how I feel in words. If you want to know how sad and hopeful I feel, you should probably read Doty's poem. Heck, I think everybody should read it at:
http://books.google.com
Have a good one!

MNYAGG