I'll Never Complain About a 'Cane Again

I don't have much to say -- just got tired of looking at my previous post with its invitation (albeit innocently made) to disaster!

Watching the news online, being sans TV:

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf

That's the frontpage of the Times-Picayune online.

Live news feed from Baton Rouge:

http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/

wmPlayer.pl?title=beloint_wwltv&props=livenoad

(remove space before wmPlayer)

and a neat site of our good old Causeway -- deserted now except for a couple of police cars, it seems:

http://www.thecauseway.com/

Prayers and good wishes to everyone in its path.

Hey Katrina! A Word In Your Ear, er, Eye, whatever . . .

Say, Katrina, ever been to New Orleans? It's lovely there. Fascinating history and culture, and the food is not to be believed! I also hear Galveston's a neat little town, not a huge tourist destination but still a great place to spend a few hours. But you know what? Those places are so crowded. Sometimes the best destinations are the least populated. Think about heading for some deserted, quiet, unspoiled beach. How else can you get any rest? Not trying to put anything on your mind, I know you're busy getting up speed, but just think about it. . .

The poor folks in the middle of the Florida panhandle aren't on their feet yet from Dennis (or last year's Ivan, for that matter). Is it awful to want to spread the pain around a bit? I guess the answer to that depends on where you live.

If this tracking map proves true, I may escape without even a power outtage, which would be great. I can't believe that one of my first postings will be to warn the students about possible schedule changes due to Katrina. Even cyberspace, dependent as it is on electricity, bows to Mother Nature.

This time I have lots of canned food and not that much in the 'fridge, as Dad suggested; frozen gallons of water and stored ice . . . but I hope she leaves us alone. Seven people dead in south Florida -- that's a mean toll for a 'cane.

Gearing Up to Lerne and Teche (Gladly)

I spent this week in all-day training or orientation sessions – for graduates in Humanities, for TA’s ditto, and a two-day teaching seminar with sessions on various topics from lesson planning to sexual harassment policies. I was grateful that the Dean of Students led off with a “snapshot” of the “Millennial” students we’ll be teaching – characteristics of their age group – because unlike my fellow TA’s, I’m a full generation and more away from these kids, so anything that helps me understand and relate to them is much appreciated.

. . . and last night my two online courses appeared on the web, and I have until Sunday evening to get the content finalized and loaded. I don’t decide the films, or the primary reading material; but I do have to come up with specific assignments, topics for discussion, my particular policies and guidelines, and enough activities and involvement for a web course, and have all this organized and up there for the start of semester on Monday. I have 90 students enrolled already. I am never supposed to meet with them face-to-face or even take phone calls from them. Should be interesting!

You know how you make definitive statements about a situation you’re not in yet, and then end up feeling like a fool? As in, before you have kids: “My kids would never . . .” and “I would always . . .” Well, before starting this program, I announced far and wide that I wouldn’t teach during it; I’d just “power my way through.” Well, it doesn’t work that way. There’s no law that says you have to teach, but you don’t graduate well-positioned to get hired if you don’t. You also miss out on a significant number of other benefits. I am really grateful to have been given the online courses (which I requested) because it’s a major plus when applying for a position. But I have to admit that until the site’s up and going, hopefully smoothly, I have some apprehension about the process. So I’m going into cyberspace for the next 72 hours to hammer and saw, and will report back with how it went.

As for courses I’m taking (and I have to take three to be eligible to teach), they are the independent study in Victorian Ghost Stories, Greek and Roman Humanities, and the French reading exam course. It will be another busy semester, but it's sinking in that Hellaciously Busy is par for the Piled High and Deep course. And since Haley and Andrew and Bailey are coming to visit in 3 weeks, and Pat soon as well, I don’t feel as homesick as I did even a short time ago.

Sarah emailed me some photos of my little loves, and this one so enchanted me that I made it the desktop background on my laptop. They were playing hide-and-seek and had just been discovered in the closet behind Papa's suitcases. I don't think there is a a sight in this world more beautiful than that of a healthy, laughing child. And if it happens to be one that you love, it's better than meat and drink. I really miss them so much.

Back Through the Haunted Looking Glass

The Haunted Looking Glass is an anthology of ghost stories selected by the one and only Edward Gorey (see illustrations in past two posts). He not only selected the stories, but illustrated each one as well as the cover and frontispiece. HLG was originally published in 1959, and that was the edition I found in the Our Lady of Victory Elementary School library in Ft Worth in the early sixties. My hair stood straight up off my head with horror at the illustrations, especially the frontispiece, which gave me “the fantods” as Mark Twain would say. Even today that picture, of some sort of nameless floating thing gliding toward an open doorway, generates a frisson of fear, no doubt because of the association with my feelings back then (I’ve searched for an image of it on the web to no avail).

At the time I read only some of the stories -- the ones that immediately captured my interest. Upon finding the book again several years ago, I read them all, and every one is a little treasure in its own right.

The New York Review of Books republished HLG in recent years, in paperback, thankfully with all the illustrations. But as always, I most enjoy reading it in the original edition as I first did so many years ago.

The stories contained therein:

Algernon Blackwood, "The Empty House"
W. F. Harvey, "August Heat"
Charles Dickens, "The Signalman"
L. P. Harley, "A Visitor from Down Under"
R. H. Malden, "The Thirteenth Tree"
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Body-Snatcher"
E. Nesbit, "Man-Size in Marble"
Bram Stoker, "The Judge's House"
Tom Hood, "The Shadow of a Shade"
W.W. Jacobs, "The Monkey's Paw"
Wilkie Collins, "The Dream Woman"
M.R. James, "Casting the Runes"

At the age of 11, I just considered them wonderfully scary stories; it wasn’t until I bought the book as a 40-something that I realized who these writers are, having encountered them again later in life, usually in much lighter contexts. Dickens, Stevenson, and Stoker need no introduction; L. P. Hartley is the author of one of my favorite books, The Go-Between, discovered when I was a teenager; and E. Nesbit’s juveniles, particularly the series on the Bastable children, would eventually join the Bedtime Canon and give me hours upon hours of reading delight. And then I came up here to FSU, got interested in the Victorians, and realized that 11-year-old Kathy had held in her hands an excellent sampler of Victorian ghost stories. Only now have I heard about Collins and James, who are well-known Victorian authors of mysteries and the supernatural.

And to think I first met them all long ago, when to me they were just shades, beckoning me into their blood-chilling worlds through the Haunted Looking Glass.

Of all the stories, “The Monkey’s Paw” was the most terrifying to me as a child. After reading it I couldn’t fall asleep unless I took my rosary out of its case and slept with it in my hand. Of course, I did this many times over, so I know I enjoyed having the wits scared out of me.

As an adult, I must award that pride of place to “The Judge’s House.” Every time I read it my eyes hurt from bugging out so, and I have to shake my head to dispel the fading echoes of “RUN, you fool!!” that ricochet around my brain.

On Break in Hot Muggy Tally

The Victorians continue to amaze me, but then I’ve tended to think about them in cliches, and that’s never the most realistic or informative way to think about any group of people. I find it surprising that, for all their pride in progress, and the growing literacy rate, and scientific and technological advances, they had such a pervasive interest in the supernatural. One of the goals of the directed study I’ll do this fall is to find some reasons why.

I joined VICTORIA, the listserv for Victorian scholars, and the emails make for fun reading as people share things they've discovered or ask for, and receive, research help on various and sundry topics from servants to funeral practices to the fistfight between Sir George Chetwynd and the Earl of Lonsdale on July 23, 1885 in Rotten Row over who was to be Mrs. Langtry’s escort that day. Peers behaving badly! There's such a mass of written material out there still waiting to be mined for information, and some of it is starting to be digitized. If you belong to a subscribing school, for example, you can peruse the London Times of the 1800's from the comfort of your home.

I have another week of break (will find out on Tuesday what I’ll be teaching in the fall) and nowhere to go and nothing (official) to do, so I’m having loads of fun sorting and filing endless piles of paper which seem to accumulate and multiply on me no matter what I do. Also giving the place a good clean. I feel a little restless and homesick, but keep thinking (as Mom reminded me) that after this coming semester, I’ll have been here a year. Then one more year of coursework, and then prelims and the dissertation. Having invested this much time I am more determined than ever to finish. I am going to resist the temptation to go home to write the dissertation; always said I would, but I had no idea how strong the temptation would be. But I think it’s the path to derailment.

So I keep my eyes on the prize, spend a lot of time thinking about a dissertation topic that would be fun, and daydreaming about having my own little place again in Winter Park and seeing the girls and grandgirls and my friends, doing all the routine little things with them that I had taken for granted but which constituted A Life, one that I very much want to get back to.

'Bye Summer! Hello Fall!

The six weeks term is over; now I have to jump into setting up the independent study on Ghost Stories in Victorian Fiction – which should be fun. I have to get to the library and work up a bibliography and some sort of specific focus to submit to Dr. F. They are pretty loosey-goosey here compared to Rollins, which requires an 8-page form with detailed descriptions and four signatures, in by deadline to do an independent study. Here it’s a one-page form, turn it in whenever.

At the end of this week or early next week I’ll find out what I’m teaching this fall. In the meantime there are things like writing guides that I know I’ll use no matter what, so I’ll work on those as well.

And I want to have a shot at submitting a paper proposal for a conference next March, so that’s the third thing on the agenda during this break.

Rob (ex-Bob’s son by his second marriage) and his roomie brought their stuff by to store here. They took courses in this past six-week session, and have to move completely out of the dorm and then move back in before the term starts August 29, which is crazy; so I offered to let them park their stuff in my largely empty and unused living room. He’s a very nice kid and I hope he has a good experience up here.