two

gone to God

Some big sadness struck the school yesterday with news that Joe Scordino, just-retired head wrestling coach and long-time business teacher, has died.

My last conversation with Joe happened as I was walking my last lap one morning a week or so ago. He pulled up alongside me in his burgundy van.

"Hey, brother, you figured out your sabbatical yet?"

"Morning, Joe. Well, I'm starting to get some ideas but it's still kind of shaky."

"It'll be great, brother. Just you wait."

"Yeah, it will."

"See ya."

And that was it. Working at opposite ends of the building in very different departments, we didn't see much of each other ... just these times in passing.

Joe's health had been deteriorating in the past few years. He'd been carrying oxygen for over a year. The last time I saw him he was over in his parking space close to the main doors and he was propped up against the front of his van ... and I worried and was starting to go over to him when he got himself moving and entered the building. I said a little prayer for him then.

And another one now.

numbers

These are probably the best numbers I've ever had since we started looking for numbers.

I'm down some poundage, too. Might this mean I'll live forever?

a notion

Seems to me that one exciting project for the Poetics leg of my sabbatical would be to read widely and deeply throughout Jacket.

Where else might I look for strong 20th-21st century poetics groundwork? PennSound?

And I wonder what I would do with that reading ... and it with me. Would it kill my own writing or bust it open?

dead expression

I wonder when the colloquial expression "to be yellow" fell out of the language. I must have been napping.

Is it only today's high school students who don't know it? Or did yesterday's high school students not know it either? Is it an expression that "honors" students know but "regular" students don't? And why would that be so?

kingsolver at duke

2008 Commencement Address by Barbara Kingsolver.

We called it a community. We lived among our villagers, depending on them for what we needed. If we had a problem, we did not discuss it over the phone with someone in Bubaneshwar. We went to a neighbor. We acquired food from farmers. We listened to music in groups, in churches or on front porches. We danced. We participated. Even when there was no money in it. Community is our native state. You play hardest for a hometown crowd. You become your best self. You know joy. This is not a guess, there is evidence. The scholars who study social well-being can put it on charts and graphs. In the last 30 years our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are not in the very poorest nations, as you might guess, nor in the very richest. The winners are Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noisy villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community.

cool cat jazz

Link: "Lotus Blossom" / Charles Lloyd.

meow

Passed the afternoon standing in a room full of cats ... maybe a hundred, hundred fifty ... cats. Sleeping cats and roving cats. Disdainful, playful, memorable cats. It didn't smell so bad, and it seemed there was a cat in every place and a place for every cat. There was no significant bickering, no full-tilt aggression. A veritable city of cats ... of peace.

I didn't leave with a cat, but somebody did.

a plan

A plan is really useful for signifying to yourself and other people that you like living, that you're looking forward to living some more, that you have a certain appetite to continue the enterprise. But one's real duty to the future is to do as you should do now. Make the best choices, do the best work, fulfill your obligations in the best way you can, and work on a scale that's appropriately small. Make plans that are appropriately small. If you do those things, then the future will take care of itself.

Wendell Berry in conversation with Jordan Fisher Smith

Choices. Work. Obligations. Scale. As I move toward decisions about the sabbatical and beyond it may be useful to turn Berry's conditions into questions ... and take them very personally on my own small scale.

What are the best choices I can make? How can I even know what the options are?

What will the best work require of me?

What are my obligations? To whom, what, or where am I obliged?

I decided to chop off the last sentence in Berry's paragraph in which he says, "But if you don't do those things, then you build up a debt against the future, which is what we're doing now." This just reminds me of the evils of my own procrastinations ... which I don't want to think about ...just now.

For you who are wondering and who care, I have submitted a very general sabbatical plan to the powers that be. So I should be breathing easier (and so should you), but I'm not sure I am ... for some reason. Possibly because the plan is so general that it is actually just another "putting  off" until ... whenever. But at least it appears that something is underway. You notice that I've only posed the questions and haven't tried to answer them. Maybe that will be attempted in future communiques.

flowerie

From out the vast wasteland that is my "garden" comes a welcome vagrant ... flax, I think ... or is it plumbago?

And off in the distance, some lilacs bloom & smell pretty good ... though maybe a bit like somebody's grandmother. But that's okay because we like grandmothers.

Click the pictures for bigger versions.

wb on mountains

Link: I Love Mountains Day - Wendell Berry.

via Home Range

more on mountaintop removal mining

old wood

Prom was nice. It was kind of standard ... and nice. It looked like many young people were having fun ... some, I'm sure, were acting at having fun ... but many were actually having it, I think.

A few minutes ago I heard the deep sad noises associated with tree removal. Sure enough. The big old pines between our house and the school are going down. So long, old pines!

This one was snow-storm damaged. The other not pictured got the brown rot or whatever. They were nice trees and will be missed.

But the tree guys aren't the smartest. It's Saturday morning and I might need to go do something out in the world, but I can't because the tree guys have landed in front of my garage door.

So I will stay home and count posts ... good for me.

prom friday

We ran a half-day schedule and stopped school at noon to facilitate preparations for The Prom this evening. I'm scheduled to be there. I wouldn't normally attend, but I'm subbing for a friend. Thunderstorms are on order for the evening, though it's quite sunny right now. We had a great greening downpour during AP Lit this morning while we were discussing The Pastoral. Sheep out the window would have been perfect. Some girls are worried about their hair ... not just direct rain, wind and lightning but dread Humidity to frizz the most conscientious do.

On other fronts ...

Is it anger that makes a ghost? That makes sadness? Or is it the other way around? No, I think some part of becoming a ghost is surely anger ... but no, dear reader, not anger with you. With me. Don't you just love bloggy vague psychoblabble?

Yesterday I had a brief burst of Facebook energy, asking some kin to befriend me ... and some have ... but not all.

Sabbatical progress? Oxymoron.

No action yet on the slow leak in the rear left tire. I expect it will go flat tonight ... maybe around 12:34 am in the middle of a thunderstorm far from home.

how you play the game

Daily Herald | Opponents carry injured home run hitter around the bases.

about an hour

tunes tire ghosty chat

For short trips out lately, some cds rather than the radio. Today it was Rachmaninoff's Vespers ... and you might think well gee brtom that's really ... um ... showing off yr better-than-thou taste in music. But no, it's really good and ... well, never mind. Yesterday it was Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, which doesn't actually sound the way it should if the key were slack ... or maybe it's the strings ... slack strings ... that I'm thinking of. But still, it should sound ... odder.

Had an almost completely flat tire today & no music could make me feel better about that. It's a slow leak. Some good guys pumped it up for me, but I bet it'll be down again tomorrow. Seems I've probably been driving around on it for the past week without noticing what I should have noticed.

Recorded some more vocal versions of recent poems. If that's the kind of thing you like, check it out at plainer.

Had a moment yesterday when I felt like a ghost. Really. Very ghosty. Me. And I don't even believe in ghosts.

Had a nice long talk with Mom tonight ... Aside from the occasional cough, she sounds pretty good ... must be all that sleep she's catching up on.

Do you ever decide to call yr brother Pat and then you just never do? I do. Too often.