Black and White

I've been glutting myself on black and white film today. I got hooked into an all-day I Love Lucy marathon on TV Land early on, and as I carefully repacked all my Santas and Nativities for another year, I enjoyed episode after episode of that show. I thought I had seen a lot of Lucy, but apparently, I had only sort of hit and missed at it. Today, I saw the famous one where she is stomping grapes amongst others, and I laughed until I had to sit down. It was great.

My second favorite episode was the one where John Wayne was a guest. They were trying to get his footprints and signature in cement to replace a square from Graumann's Chinese Theater that Lucy and Ethel had destroyed somehow. John Wayne fit into the screwball world so easily, and he seemed to be having a great deal of fun. Every time I see him in anything, I always think of my beloved Nana. She loved John Wayne. He was her favorite movie star. Seeing him young and handsome and in his prime on that comedy, I can see why.

I'm now watching Sunset Boulevard again. I've lost track of how many times I've seen this film. I love it. Something about the fact that this is New Year's Eve seemed to demand Norma and her sad delusions. Even though I know this movie inside and out, I'm already enjoying it ten times as much as the other film I watched tonight, Music and Lyrics.

I wonder why the old stuff is always so much better to me. Just the camera angle where Max is playing the organ and his hands are in the foreground with Gillis' angry face in the back is better than any scene in the entire other film I watched. As I look at my collection of DVDs, most of my permanent collection is vintage. Is it that they just made them better then?

Well, Norma just stood up in the flickering projector light, and I think it's time for me to get back to my viewing more in earnest. I hope everyone has a good New Year's Eve.

Survival

I made it. Yesterday's surgery is finally over, and today I can think again at last. Even going through the process of getting ready for the procedure wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be except for putting in the IV. I never do well with that. I think I do much better than I used to, but I still get so irrationally afraid. I don't know why such a tiny thing should be such a source of uncontrollable fear, but there you go. I won't know the results until Jan. 13th, but just getting through this part that I've been waiting for and worrying over for months now is a tremendous relief.

Today I joined Twitter. I am going to try it out. I think it won't be one of those things I tinker with much, especially if I can't get some of my friends involved with it, but it looks interesting. I like the idea of it. If you haven't seen it, go to Twitter.com.

I'm going to De-Christmas the house today. Now that the looming cloud of doom has lifted, I feel like going and doing again. I wish I had more of my break left to go and do in, but I'll have to make the most of what's left to me.

Laughing in the Face of Disaster

I had to play last night for our annual Carol Request Night service. My friend and fellow accompanist who handles the piano end of things came in while I was playing prelude pieces and offered me a hit of Pepto Bismol. There's nothing quite like request night when you're at best an amateur musician. I laughed and declined, but I can't say it wasn't a good idea.

Once we got started, no one wanted to make a request. My friend and I, who can just barely see each other across the top of the various instruments, just gave each other one of our long, speaking looks. Once people stopped being puzzled by the ability to choose, the requests came in fast and thick. There were at least two that I didn't know at all, and judging from the bemused gaze that my friend gave me in the few seconds that we had while rustling hymnal pages, she wasn't too familiar with them, either. We did a quick bit of sight reading and chord-fudging and got through it, though.

By the time it was over, I felt like I'd been wrung out and left to dry. That's when it was time for me to sing my solo. At least all the nerves I had been saving all day had already been expended. I didn't have much left to get nervous with, and I think "What Child Is This?" came out okay.

Despite all the nerves, it was a good service. It was lovely to hear all the carols sung, and it was wonderful as well to play all of them at once. When it was done, I felt better than I have in a long time. Some of the Christmas spirit I've been missing as I wait for my upcoming surgery flickered into life, and I am working hard to nurture that fragile spark.

After a Long Silence

I haven't written in a long time, and truth be told, I have been debating abandoning this blog. Ever since last year's incident, it's felt spoiled, and although the one responsible for all that trouble is now in the process of drinking himself into a coma at one of our state institutions of higher learning, I still feel the taint of his having been here like sand stirred up in a clear pool. I have to write somewhere, though, and I don't feel like ending this.

Life lately has been wretched. It seems a pity to come back here after a two-month absence to say that, but I can't lie. Pain and other problems I've been having lately have led my doctor to start running increasingly invasive tests to find out just how desperate my situation is, and so far, things aren't good. The radiologist told me I had "an interesting uterus", my OB/GYN told me that the fibroids have returned and that one of them is the size of a large lemon (why are these things always frickin' fruit?), and now I am in a holding pattern waiting to have a surgical procedure to find out whether the big scary C word will come into play or not.

After I left the radiology with the results of the ultrasounds, I was sure that I was about to face a hysterectomy. Even though I have been trying to steel myself for that possibility since 2001 when I first found out that I had fibroids, I just could not control the waves of grief. My doctor, who is truly wonderful, talked with me about things, and he said there is not a reason, unless cancer is indicated by the biopsy, to take drastic steps right now. However, in his estimate, I probably only have about two more years left if I want to have a family and then the situation will have deteriorated to a point where more drastic measures will have to be taken.

What am I going to do? Two years might as well be fifteen minutes. There's nobody on the horizon. I don't even know where to look. I feel like I'm just sailing through time at warp speed watching minutes of my life tick away with supernatural speed. Everywhere I look, all my friends have found someone, have children, have what they need. Why is it that I'm still alone?

My doctor talked to me about having a baby on my own. I can't say that I've never thought about it, but after a long time of praying and soul-searching, I don't think that's the right path for me. I will need someone along side me. I want someone along side me, too.

I believe that God has a plan for me. Right now, though, it's so excruciatingly hard to see how any of this is "working for my good" or where it's leading me. I lay in the doctor's office drugged and draped on a table for more than two hours two days ago for a procedure that didn't work. Now, I have to go into the hospital during my Christmas holidays to have outpatient surgery to find out whether or not I have cancer. Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho. It just doesn't seem to end.

Now my mother is on a mission to get me married off, and she's only thinly veiling it in kidding when she starts talking to me about perfect strangers while desert is being served during a church social. I feel like one of those spinster relatives in a Jane Austen novel who the whole family is just a little bit embarrassed by. More than I have in a long time, I feel the need to pack up suitcases and move away, to a place where I don't speak the language, to a place where nobody knows me or my family, to a place where nobody knows or cares that I am a ticking time bomb.

I am trying just to take it one day at a time. If I do that, maybe I can keep this thin clay vessel from shattering into a million tiny pieces.

Simple Holiday Joy

I was in Wal-Mart two days ago, and I got sucked in by the Halloween aisle. Halloween is still one of my favorite holidays. I guess I'm always going to adore the costumes, the cobwebs, and the candy. It's still several days till payday, so I was mostly relegated to browsing, but I did find one small item I had to bring home with me, a rubber duck with a pumpkin costume on. It was only a dollar, and for the amount of laughter I got out of it, it was very cheap at that price. I threw it in the cart on top of more pragmatic purchases like dog food and milk and headed for the checkout. Sometimes, I guess what is most needed at the end of a very long and trying day is some whimsical bit of childhood, even if it is mostly yellow and squeaky.

Hiatus

I haven't felt much like blogging for the past month, and I certainly haven't had much time to carve out for it, so I've let this sort of fall into the pile of things I don't deal with. There are so many changes and of such massive types at school that they feel like they're consuming me. The revisions to our departmental curriculum are causing me to question everything I thought I knew about what it means to be a teacher and to probe my own practices deeply.

So far, I haven't liked what I've seen very much. While I can't say that I've been doing everything wrong, I certainly haven't been doing things to the level that is possible, and now that we actually have someone guiding us to know what we can achieve, I feel like I need to step up my game considerably. Just the thought of the amount of work involved, though, is staggering. Lesson plans take as long as four hours to complete and produce stacks of paper when they're done. I come home at night feeling as though I've been caught in a whirlwind all day long that has just finally dumped me back at my door so I can fall down in relative peace for a few hours before beginning it all over again.

Many of my colleagues are not taking this transition well. I don't know if they're going to stick with it or not. Some of them are really resisting the change with a vengeance. I can understand that the change is hard, and even now, there are some parts of what we're doing that I don't necessarily agree with, but for the most part, I know that what we've been doing is fundamentally flawed and broken. If it's not working, why on earth would we possibly want to keep on doing that same thing? This new way isn't some outlandish methodology; it looks like what I see coming out of other states and programs across the nation.

My main problem with it isn't the validity of what we're being asked to do; it's with my own inability to juggle everything efficiently. I keep having moments of sheer panic and weariness where I just want to fold my arms, put my head on my desk, and cry. I feel even more like Sisyphus than normal, and I know all too well the feeling of that big, gritty stone as it makes its stately progression down the middle of my back on its way back to the bottom of the hill.

If I can just keep focused on my end goal, the students, and the fact that this year will be the worst of it, I think I can endure. So much will be better once we can get through this first bad year of redesign. We'll have a clear purpose and goal, and we can begin to polish and refine. I just hope that I can get there without running away screaming. Right now, it's a very close race, so stay tuned, folks...

Little Bits and Pieces

Lately I feel as if little bits and pieces of me are slowly being nibbled away. As usual, I am overcommitted in every possible way and to every possible group. I spend about 12 hours of every day at school only to stagger home and fall down for a few hours and do it all over again. On the weekends, I try to keep up my church responsibilities, but I start my new week just as tired as I left the old one. How did I get this way?

I wish I could find a balance. I don't know how to regain it. I like everything that I do, and that's what makes it so hard to cut away things. I can't cut away the prep time at school, either, because otherwise I can't get my job there done. I guess I just have to live in hope that the biggest part of the hard labor there is going to settle down some soon so I can catch my breath a bit. Otherwise, I may be headed for a mental health day very early on this year or an honest-to-goodness sick day as my body forces me to take the time it's missing elsewhere flat of my back in the bed in revenge.

A Good Weekend

Yesterday, my best friend and I went to the Prairie Arts Festival in West Point. It was a great trip. She and I don't get to do much together. She lives near Jackson, and her life as a teacher with a family of husband and three small children pretty much keeps her running all the time. My life is notoriously hectic as well, so we only see each other a few times a year despite the fact that we really don't live that far apart in the global scheme of things.

We decided that despite the impending Gustav-madness, we were going to load up and go see the Prairie Arts Festival. It was an easy drive, only a couple of hours, and we were certainly both familiar with the area from our college days. Driving up, though, was like taking a trip back in time. The closer we got to the Golden Triangle area, the more it felt like we were back in college again.

We shopped and enjoyed the wonderful artists' works at the Festival, and we decided to go to Starkville when we left. I hadn't been to Starkville in a very long time, and I wanted to go see how the campus had changed. Just being there again and seeing how much has been totally removed was surreal. The university I went to is basically no longer there except in ghost images hidden under or behind other buildings. It's not that it's a bad change, but seeing huge gaping holes or new construction where all the dorms of my college experience once stood was a little weird.

The best part of our trip was just the talking. We talked about all kinds of things, some of which went all the way back to college. Old memories, good and bad, floated up, and it was a pleasure to walk through them together. We ate at Lil Dooeys as the capstone on the day and came home.

Even though the trip took the whole day, I feel refreshed. I think we're going to make it an annual thing. Maybe next year we can even get up there in time for the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival portion of the weekend. Even if we don't get to do it again, though, it was great this year.

Waiting for Gustav

Over one million people have left the New Orleans area and the Gulf Coast. They've already shut down I-59 South and reversed it. All traffic south of Hattiesburg is now northbound. Once again, we're in that weird waiting phase where everything seems to be holding its breath.

I spent most of today preparing the house for whatever of Gustav we're going to get here in Central MS. Supposedly, we're in for heavy rains and some wind, but Katrina is too fresh in my mind, like the minds of so many others. I have everything stripped down from outside, and I bought bottled water, canned foods, and batteries. It may be nothing but a lot of water falling from the sky, but the memories of fourteen days with no electricity are vivid still.

Cruising around Wal-Mart Friday, I noticed that people were in that state of controlled panic. Carts were full of Vienna sausages and crackers. Bottled water and toilet tissue were gone from the shelves as were C and D cell batteries. Flashlights were completely sold out. Fortunately, I had bought most of my "disaster kit" a long time ago. I just needed a few AAA batteries, and I wanted a clip booklight. I remembered that one of the worst parts of Katrina was trying to read by kerosene lantern.

Today, Dad did some small repairs on my roof, and I mowed my grass. I took down all my windchimes and birdfeeders. I tucked my big lawn chair under a secure porch. When I came home, I put the PT Cruiser under my car shed. My banners are down from the mailbox and the big pole in my yard. Except for a few things on the side of my house, I think I'm about as battened down as I can get. All that's left now is to continue to pray.

Self-Reflection

I've been thinking a lot lately about my teaching, about who I am as a teacher and what it means to be one. I've been thinking about what I do and how I do it. This year is a year of great change for my school and my district, so I guess all the snow in the snowglobe has been shaken up thoroughly.

Lately, I have found so much to think about. New approaches, new ideas, new processes seem to surround me this year. It's profoundly hard to go outside my comfort zone so often, but I think it's going to be a good thing for both my students and me in the end. Things that I have done for years in a certain way I now call into question. Are those practices sound? Are they serving my students to the best of my ability?

Today our district brought Ron Clark to speak to us. I hadn't wanted to see him at all. I was expecting something totally unrealistic, someone with his head totally in the clouds, but what I found instead was that he was funny and realistic. I didn't expect that. While I won't be dancing on tables any time soon, I did take some ideas and inspiration from him. It was a good presentation.

This whole year has been like that, crazy and unpredictable. I wonder what we're all going to be like when it's done. If we can survive it, I hope we're going to be better than what we were when it began.

At Last....

...I got to hear my wonderfully-talented friend's recital. He played at the Kennedy Center, so it was broadcast and archived online. I, not having any form of network TV and no local channels through my little satellite, missed the actual broadcast, but I did just sit down and watch it online through the Kennedy Center's website. You can watch it yourself if you want to by clicking here.

I've known this friend since I was in graduate school at Indiana, and his abilities never cease to amaze me. One of my favorite things during my time there was to hear him play anything. I often said that I would have been happy living in a shoebox under his piano, even if all he ever played was "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." This recital is one he'd told me about a long time ago, and trust me, it's well worth your time to listen to it. It, like everything else he does, is truly fabulous.

I wish I lived closer to where he is so I could go hear him live. I love to watch him play. He plays with such passion. It's expressed in every aspect of his expression and his body. In a way, though, this medium had things to recommend it, too, because the camera followed his hands so much.

The music he played in this recital is all Brazilian. It was lovely, and there are a few pieces that I wish I had recordings of, or at least had recording of his performances of, anyway. I can't exactly describe what it is about those particular pieces that drew me; probably it was the melancholy nature he talked about. I tend to gravitate toward minor keys and that thread of sadness and longing in music, anyway. It is what draws me toward the blues and to many of the artists whose music I buy repeatedly, so likely it's what I find compelling here as well.

He lectured some between the pieces and gave their history and interpretation, which added a lot to the performance, but also made me smile since I haven't seen him or talked to him in any way other than by email or FaceBook in a very long time. It was good to hear his voice and see him again, even if it was just a one-way thing. I'm glad he's doing so well. More than just about anybody I know, he deserves it.

Maybe This Is The Problem With Committees

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton

Interesting Distinction

A nerd is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology. A geek is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology, and likes it!
-- as seen on a Crackberry.com post signature

I am such a geek. I always have been. Not just by this definition, either, although I do fit this one. I even have a pair of tiny studs that say geek. I found them in some accessory shop somewhere, and they are one of my prized possessions. I think they're too small for anybody to read unless they're way, way too far into my personal space for my comfort, but I get a kick out of wearing them.

An example of my geekdom came today. I spent several very happy hours this afternoon cruising blueroomsolutions.com and nancydrewthemes.com getting some very savage new themes for my beloved BlackBerry (who I have named Onesimus, meaning "Useful" and hoping it's not sacrilegious since it's a biblical name) as well as finding old friends on FaceBook and playing a new hellishly-addictive game on there called Scramble. Technology is fun. :) I don't mind being a geek. I figure everybody has to have fun somehow, and this at least keeps me off the streets and out of jail....

Machine Curse

This title comes from an old game "back in the day." I can't even remember which one. It was something you could do to another player to make everything in his army turn to absolute crap. Well, I think somebody has done it to me. I am having a run of the worst luck imaginable. I am almost afraid to go outside.

Early in the week, I found out that several things at school had gone to crap unexpectedly. I think they can be fixed fairly easily, but they were the sort of little twists that were just unlucky.

When the insurance adjuster came out to look at my roof Thursday, it turns out that the people who put it on three years ago either didn't know or didn't care what they were doing. Therefore, I have no insurance coverage for the damages inside, and I'm also going to have to have a roofer come out and redo part of the roof to prevent the problem from recurring. I just wanted to sit down and cry. Why is that so many people in this world seem dedicated to no other proposition than "take the money and run?" (No offense to Steve Miller or his band...)

The rest of Thursday was a crapfest of lost items precious to me, jamming copying machines, and pin pricks small and great. Yesterday, I mostly hid here at home in hopes that the Machine Curse would leave me alone. I went to Red Field to relax, and Mom and Dad were going to come up and bring food so we could enjoy the unseasonably cool weather with a dinner before school gets rolling. The next thing I knew, they were calling to tell me that they'd had a major tireshredding blowout on their way up. The tires were brand new. My Machine Curse is spreading. It's scary.

This morning, I got up and let Roux out for her early morning bathroom break, and as I was leading her around the backyard on her leash, I glanced toward my dilapidated barn only to see that it has finally fallen down. I don't know if the Machine Curse gets the credit for that one. The Machine Curse really wouldn't have had to work very hard for that one; one good push would have brought it down.

I am hoping that all this bad luck is cycling out or at least is getting ready for something big and good on the horizon. I keep thinking that we've got to be getting to the end of of this particular tunnel soon. Since I'm going to have to go to the bank and refinance a mortgage to take care of it, the Machine Curse should be propitiated by that. That is, after all, the modern day version of a blood sacrifice, is it not? It will be for me, anyway....

Life Rafts and Tidal Waves

I worked registration the past two days, and it never ceases to amaze me how rude people can be to others over things that are nothing. I got "cussed at" more times than I can count because our district now requires two forms of proof for residency verification or because a student was on a list for old fees and could not therefore start registration until the proof of residency was shown or the fee was cleared. For this, people were willing to be obscene. I didn't do it. I didn't make the policy. I didn't even want to have to be the one to tell them, but they surely too it out on me. I hate that.

These were parents of juniors and seniors who have all had students at our school for years. That means that the process of registration is well-known to them, except of course for the new residency requirements. They know that getting through the entire process from Old Fees to Book Pick-Up and final form sign-off can take as long as two hours at peak times. However, every year, we have parents who come in and act as though they should be able to sail through in fifteen minutes. They act as though we have a personal vendetta against them and are trying to deprive them of their livelihood because we can't forward them to the front of a line of three hundred or so other people who have all been waiting in the heat just as they have. They get angry when we tell them that they have to be with their student to complete the forms, that they can't just kick their kid out of the car with a blank check and go. If it were the first time around, I could understand, but if your child has been with us three years.....

It's over for me now, thank God. I only work seniors and juniors. I leave the sophomores, who are coming in for the first time, and the new students and makeup day to cooler heads than my own. I need the rest of this last precious week to recover and rest up. Next week starts our staff development, and then we'll be back in harness for the long haul of our new year with all our new plans and designs in place. I'm excited to see how it goes and am hoping for a great good year.

One good thing from yesterday was seeing my friend. He'd been on a trip to see some of his girlfriend's family in California, and he brought me a gift. It was so sweet of him to think of me, and although I didn't really get to talk to him much in between the unending onslaught of people coming in the door to curse me, just seeing him and knowing that somebody in this world didn't wish me ill was a big boost. Since I've also been trying to wrangle with the insurance issues of getting someone down to look at the roof and my ceilings lately, I have been feeling very overwhelmed. It was like a little life raft put out there for me in very choppy seas. I needed it a lot, but then, he's good at that. It's nice how God works that out.

Well, I'm off to do as much nothing as I can for the rest of this afternoon. This is the last day of it, so I have to make it count.

It's Almost Time

Since that most wonderful of days, Pay Day, arrived at last, I went to do my pre-school blowout buy. As I wandered through the aisles of school supplies, I actually felt a little spring enter my step. I know that settles the Geek Queen crown ever more firmly on my head, but there you have it. There is something about the sight of piles of clean, new notebooks, boxes of unbroken, sharp-pointed crayons, and packages of bright yellow pencils that cheer my soul. It has always been so.

As I walked through the Wal-Mart aisles and watched the little children with their parents, I knew that the little ones understood this, too. Their parents, for the most part, were simply trying to navigate the sea of carts, peering confusedly at the blurry photocopied lists while pondering the relative merits of the glue stick and liquid glue. The children, though, knew. They understood the magic inherent in the crisp new folder, the necessity of purchasing Crayola crayons, and the satisfaction of finding just the right pencil pouch to hold all one's personal treasures. Their happiness was infectious.

Perhaps it is that all these things, all these tools of the education trade in their unused state, represent a kind of potential. There is a hopefulness in the clean serenity of the first blank page of a legal pad, and a great deal of satisfaction in putting the pen to the page. Anything might come from that action. Any work of greatness or triviality might spring from it.

As I left that section of the store for other supplies, I took the little lift with me. It almost made me wish I'd put a box of sharp-pointed Crayolas of my own in with the copy paper and other grown-up stuff I'd thrown in the cart just in celebration.

Walk the Line

I watched Walk the Line at long last yesterday. I've had it sitting on the top of my TV from Netflix for a month, but something kept coming up or I wasn't in the mood to sit down and pay attention to something for two hours. I'm glad I did, though. It was great.

I have always liked Johnny Cash, but I didn't really know more than the tiniest bit about his life. The movie filled in some of the big blanks and made me want to know more. I'll order his autobiography and put it on the shelf for future reading. He and his life interest me. That whole period of music history interests me, those musicians who started there at Sun Studios and became the foundation of so much that came later.

The performances in the film were amazing. Joaquin Phoenix was so compelling. I thought he managed a perfect mix of someone who was constantly fighting for the raw edges of daily control and someone who had found the one thing they wanted most. There was tremendous strength in him, but always there, just below the surface, was a great fragility in the eyes, especially when he was with June. There were scenes, especially the scenes between Cash and his father, that moved me to tears.

Reese Witherspoon was also perfect in her role. I always like her in everything I see her in. She always seems to chose roles that are "real" people, and that may be part of why I respect her so much. Her performance in this film made it clear that the love June had wasn't an easy thing and also showed her strength. It was a very complex portrayal and powerful for that reason.

I wound up watching the film twice. I may eventually buy it. I am still thinking about it. The love portrayed on the screen between Johnny and June was not an easy or a comfortable kind, but it was so true. I keep thinking about the scene at the end of the movie where he proposed for the final time and she accepted. He told her that she was his best friend amongst other things, and I think that's probably the truest secret of their love. They were the other half of each other. How else could they have survived everything else that happened? That's what I hope to find someday, my other half, my best friend. I hope it's out there for me like it was for them.

Repairs Needed

The recent rains here in Podunk have revealed a couple of problems with my roof. Dad fixed them today, but they left their mark. It looks like I'm going to have to have major repairs done on my ceilings.

Right now, my ceilings are this sort of horrible Celotex stuff from the 1970s. Since the leaks opened up, the tiles have discolored, sagged, and are in the process of falling down. I have been too embarrassed to have anyone in the house for a long time because of how ugly they are. I didn't have enough money in the big renovation done several years ago to have them done at that time, and now I'm glad. I can't wait any more, though, so now is the time.

I think insurance is going to cover the damaged parts, and really, my bedroom and my kitchen are the only two rooms without water damage of some kind because of the leaking. I will probably borrow the money to get those two rooms done, too. It's time I don't have to be embarrassed over that anymore, and I think it's better if it all gets done at the same time. Here we go with construction again...

Missippiority Complex

Today, I was talking with someone about his job. He works in a nationally-known technology company with branches in several states. The company is currently losing its "best-and-brightest" from its Mississippi location because of worker dissatisfaction. The number one complaint? A worker here in MS makes as much as three times less than a worker with equal skills, qualifications, and seniority as a worker in another part of the country. This inequity is maintained even when workers from other plants are transferred to the MS plant. The company can't understand why this is a problem or why the workers hired here in MS prefer to find other jobs. As I was talking this situation over, I thought this was just a perfect example of a larger problem here in Mississippi, a strange belief held by outsider and native alike that everything here is just a little less valuable somehow because it's from Mississippi.

Outsiders do it all the time. Mississippi, poor backwards, Southern, redneck, racist, illiterate child of the past. Mississippi, dressed in hoop skirts or bib overalls, living in shotgun shacks or decaying antebellum mansions, playing banjo or blues guitar, these elements, these fragments of a larger whole are the caricatures that seem to blind those who don't know her to the truth of a much larger, much broader whole. We're last or next to last on most of the national polls, after all, and stereotypes are comfortable and familiar.

What started to disturb me today was the fact that it seems that too often our own folks believe it, too. When I start to think of the tremendous number of writers and musicians our state has produced, I can't help but wonder why so little has been done to commemorate, honor, and stand up for that. I can name a quick handful of names that alone would be worth a state puffing out its chest in pride, Elvis, Faulkner, Welty, Wright, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmie Rodgers, Tennessee Williams, and that's barely even starting to touch the surface.

While there are efforts honor these talents folks, most Mississippians, just sort of go around shuffling their feet in the dust with their heads down as though we've never produced anything of value. What's wrong with what we make, with what we do? What's wrong with Shearwater Pottery, what's wrong with a Walter Anderson print? What's wrong with a Viking range in the kitchen or a La-Z-Boy chair? What's wrong with a Peavy amp or guitar? Why do we constantly seem to be apologizing for something?

I can't say that we don't have any problems. It would be a lie to say that poverty doesn't exist here, that we don't face education issues, that we aren't trying to find our way in the modern world. But here's the million-dollar question: Who isn't? What state isn't facing poverty, education reform, and questions about how to go forward in a confusing mess of modern political crap? I wish my state would cast off its shy Southern self-deprecation and stand a little taller. I don't care if we're ever like all our sisters and neighbors. We are different, and that's okay. I just want us to be comfortable in that difference and proud of all the good things that we have here.

The Details

I'm sewing my life together with the details. I know that sounds strange, and explaining why I need to do that right now would be too complex to go into here, and quite frankly, not something I'm sure I want to do. That in and of itself is odd, because I used to come to this blog as an outlet for everything that I needed to think through. I think this somehow became too public last year when some students found it, and now each time I sit down to write about the things that are closest to me, I find that I can't do it anymore here. It doesn't really bother me for my friends to read me, but somehow, what happened last year makes me feel like someone is spying in the windows of my house with a telephoto lens waiting to catch something compromising or ridiculous.

So, without going into details, I feel hollow lately. To combat it, I am frantically filling the time and the emptiness with work. I have spent long hours in my new classroom getting in ready, torn down the old bulletin board in the hall outside my room and mostly redone it, made a million lists of things still to be purchased or done before school begins, and fiddled endlessly with other preschool details such as handouts. I have tweaked and retweaked my BlackBerry to the point that it is radically different almost every day, and I have been on the verge of upgrading its OS to a beta version of 4.5 numerous times until the fear of bricking my Berry stopped me.

The creeping empty can be held back with furious activity. I can hold it back with tv and good books, too, sometimes. As long as the gears in my mind spin on idle, as long as they don't engage, things are okay. I wish I could purge it. I wish I could run out in the yard, throw back my head, howl at the moon, dance in the wet grass, and feel the empty go away, but instead, I fold another load of clothes. Instead of just heading my car off into the horizon and driving until I'm somewhere else, I come back up the driveway and mow the grass, endless circles going nowhere leaving ordered paths behind me.

I feel like a shadow of who I used to be, and I hate that feeling. I look at photos of myself from when I was in graduate school or overseas, and it's like I'm staring into the eyes of another person. I really miss her, too. I wish I knew what to do to get that feeling of wholeness and confidence back. I'm tired of having to fabricate things to keep my mind off the dark corners. I'd rather throw some light into them and drive the shadows away for good.