doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for June, 2006
sweet nectar
0
I love rain.
Do I write this every year?
I love rain.
I love the way the earth cools down and the sweet smells arise.
I love the smell of the earth when rain has fallen.
It’s funny because where I live, I have horses next door. It is extremely windy out here and the manure often goes through the fence to land in my yard. I know, you’re thinking…ewwww…but contemplate horse manure. It’s mostly grass or hay. There is very little else in it. Grass and hay smell sweet.
So….(long story longer), when the rains fall, the sweet smell rises from the earth and permeates the air.
It is quite lovely…in that rural country sort of way (I know you city people are thinking this is all very disgusting).
The rain quenches me. It’s like my skin opens up and accepts the moisture in the air. My skin gets soft. My hair gets soft.
Did I mention that it’s been raining…
…and that I love the rain?
postcrossing
0
I’m a sucker for a good postcard. I love to receive postcards (and mail, for that matter) from different places. I especially love to receive mail from overseas so I can see the cool stamps that different countries use.
So imagine my delight when I found postcrossing. They hook up other people who are interested in receiving postcards around the world and you send them to one another.
I signed up to send five (five at a time is the limit) and I received the information. I will be sending postcards to Australia, Germany (2), France, and Slovakia. All of the recipients are women. One of them makes beautiful handmade cards.
I love making connections to people around the world. I like being able to share a piece of my world with them. I think it will be interesting.
I can’t wait to see what I receive in the mail, as well.
social constructs
05 years ago
The summer school semester started yesterday. I am taking a class in Advanced Technical Writing and another in Ethical Issues in Professional and Technical Writing. Both are ten week online courses. (I’ll be taking a five week in-person photography course starting in July.)
I’m reading through all of the introductions for one of my classes and it amuses me at how happy people are to see names they recognize. One woman went so far as to write “…I feel better knowing people in the class…now I know who to sit by. “
Okay, I know she’s being funny since we don’t actually see one another except in the virtual sense. But what amuses me is how much they seem to need one another to get through the course. It makes them feel safer to know someone else in the course.
I wonder, though, if they understand that same language that makes them feel safer can be alienating to those who don’t know anyone else. It’s like walking into a classroom where all of the popular kids are huddled in a corner giggling while the stragglers stand back and wonder where they belong.
I am usually the outsider. I tend to know the faculty members better than any of the other students. I talk to faculty much more and deal with them daily whereas I rarely have time to talk to other students.
I do know Erin in this course. She has decided to take a course and it happened to be one that I was in. It’s nice to know someone but it also didn’t make a huge difference to me in terms of my progress in the course.
I know I’m a huge proponent of social software and love to see how people interact.
Maybe that’s because I’m the person that rarely interacts. I’m the standoffish (read shy) one over in the corner wondering what all the hooplah is about.
swap meets
05 years ago
by dawn
in the early years
The thing I remember the most about San Diego was the swap meet.
Every weekend, we were at a swap meet. I can't remember what we sold but I'm pretty sure it was old stuff that my parents wanted to get rid of. You know the saying, "One man's junk is another man's treasure." I'm not sure if any of it could have been another man's treasure but it sure got us through some rough times.
I remember wandering around the swap meet. Back then, kids roamed without their parents. No one worried about a kid being snatched up or being hurt by mean people. No one kept an eye on their kids every second of every day. We were free to roam and play – just as long as we didn't get into trouble.
Five years old and I was roaming around a San Diego swap meet like I owned the place.
If you've never been to a big swap meet, let me explain it to you. We're not talking a few aisles of cars and peoples' wares spread out on tarps. We're talking miles and miles of cars and vans and tables and awnings and tarps (we were of the tarp variety – too poor to afford anything else). There are areas of new goods and areas of the used (we were the latter). There are aisles for food.
Every Saturday and Sunday, we were bundled up and taken to the swap meet. We'd help our parents unload the van (an old Metro – looked like an ice cream or milk truck) and put everything out on the ground. We'd help label everything with a price tag. We'd make sure that everything was out.
And then we were free.
Sometimes we had a dollar but more often, we had very little money at all. We'd go back to the van for lunch (mom would have made sandwiches).
For little kids, it was like a smorgasbord, though. It was a wild world full of many different kinds of people. There were amazing things going on.
What I remember most, though, is rust and old shoes and the smell of books. Rusty car parts and tools. Rusty metals were abundant. Old shoes were always scattered among the tarps. People bought them. I always wondered what they did with them after buying them (and, to this day, I have trouble buying used shoes, even at vintage stores, because of what they remind me of).
The books…oh, the books. That was heaven to me. I loved the smell of opening a book and rippling the pages so that old book smell would come out.
Even then. Even at that age, I couldn't get enough books.
They made everything bareable.
lights, camera, action!
3
A few years ago, while in therapy, my therapist suggested all kinds of ways for me to come out of my shell.
You see, I had created this nice, safe little world where people did not get too close and I did not put myself out there so I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be hurt. People scared me. People made me nervous.
In meetings, I would sit in the back of the room, trying to be as inobtrusive and invisible as possible. I would avoid outings like the plague.
My therapist asked me to start volunteering for things – to offer to do trainings at work, to be a group leader in a group I belonged to.
I wouldn’t. It scared me too much. I couldn’t do it.
Then I tried out for The Vagina Monologues and I got a part. I don’t know why I tried out but I did. However, I scared myself right out of it (and it was when I first got cancer and was having enough trouble coping with that, school, and whatever else was going on in my life). I bowed out. I couldn’t do it. Just thinking about standing up in front of others scared the heck out of me.
I wonder what my therapist would think of me now.
I took a job that requires that I train others. I have to stand up in front of groups and talk to them – actually talk to them.
Typically, the groups are no larger than 10 people. However, in the last few weeks, I’ve had sessions with 20+ people in them (twice). Yesterday, I presented to an auditorium full of people – students and parents. I was told that it was over 150 people.
Me in front of 150+ people.
Omigod.
I was shaking and I was nervous. But I did it. I knew what I was talking about. I was comfortable with the topic. I was comfortable with my knowledge of the topic.
I think she’d be proud of me – and maybe a little surprised, too.
bindweed
05 years ago
american life in poetry: column 062
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate 2004-2006
Gardeners who’ve fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It’s an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
Bindweed
There is little I can do
besides stoop to pluck them
one by one from the ground,
their roots all weak links,
this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
at night, not the Heavenly Blue
so like silk handkerchiefs,
nor the Giant White so timid
in the face of the moon,
but poor relations who visit
then stay. They sleep in my garden.
Each morning I evict them.
Each night more arrive, their leaves
small, green shrouds,
reminding me the mother root
waits deep underground
and I dig but will never find her
and her children will inherit
all that I’ve cleared
when she holds me tighter
and tighter in her arms.
Reprinted from “Headlong,” University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author, and first published in “Poetry Northwest,” Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright (c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is “Home Stand,” a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
la gringa
0
My brother called tonight. He asked if Dakota could come out and play.
He makes me laugh. Whenever he calls, he takes on a different role. Sometimes he’s Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. Sometimes he’s a lost enduser in need of serious computer assistance. He always makes me laugh when he does this.
He called to ask if I’d like to go down to Mexico with him sometime in the next month or so. He and a friend recently purchased a home in Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point for you gringos).
Uhhh…Mexico? Heck, yeah. I’m there.
He said he’s going to give me a key to the house and that I can go down whenever I want – if I want to take a friend or get away or whatever. He said there is one rule for the house: whatever you use, you replenish. That’s fair enough.
I asked if he wanted me to help out with the house since he was giving me a key. He told me that the only thing he wants me to do is go down, take pictures around town, and then get them framed so they can hang them up in the house.
I can surely do that.
He also told me that he’s talked to a local gift shop about my photography. They’d like me to make up some cards so they can see them and they may put them in their store.
Whoa.
He’s my agent. :-)
He’s so cool. I swear. I’m a lucky sister.