Playing Hooky

Today was the annual all-campus "Celebration of Learning." Classes were cancelled so that faculty and staff could come together, listen to overpaid, trendy, motivational speakers blabbing about educational assessment, and work on common course outlines, i. e., meaningless documents that everyone except the accreditation team ignores. Some of my colleagues just had to attend to confirm that the common course outlines were revised correctly. I, on the other hand, took a personal day.

The Celebration of Learning started four years ago, the brain child of our newest president. I went to the first one with an open mind. After sitting through a mind-numbing speech stating the obvious—students come to college to learn—and two excruciatingly boring break-out sessions, I went to the buffet lunch to find that the caterers hadn't cooked enough food. Like my experience with the McGriddle at McDonald's, I was foolish enough to try the Celebration of Learning only that one time.

So Elizabeth, who played hooky with me, and I decided to visit some places in the city that everyone knows about but which we had never seen. We started at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. The center is clean, spacious, and well-staffed; the birds are magnificent. I took a number of pictures that I wouldn't be able to get unless the raptors were tethered to a perch:



And since the center had a small butterfly garden, I was shooting the bugs as well, like this tiny cassius blue:


The center is on a lake, where an immature, very tame white ibis posed:


I enjoyed the photo ops but not the idea of the center. One of the volunteers explained that in the wild, most raptors die in their first year, but in captivity, they live considerably longer. The smaller birds in the aviaries didn't seem to have a bad life. But I felt awful about the bald eagles and large owls roped to posts with six-foot tethers. Trees shaded their area, but if a beam of sunlight found a large enough hole in the canopy, there was no where to escape. They reminded me of old folks in nursing homes. Were they content just to be alive, enjoying the taste of raw meat for scheduled dinners and the travels of the sun across the sky? Or would they have preferred death to this confinement? Their stoic, noble faces didn't reveal the answers.

The goal is to release as many of the birds back into the wild as possible. Those with severe injuries—amputated wings after collisions with power lines, for example—help educate the visitors. But the birds' existence at the center is such a reduction from their lives in the wild. I can't imagine losing a range measured in miles for one where a six-foot tether determines the farthest one can travel.

On the way home, we stopped at the Orlando Science Center because billboards in the city indicated that the Our Body: The Universe Within exhibit had begun. We should have confirmed that before paying the $15 admission. The staff was still arranging the dead bodies, so we were left touring exhibits appropriate to 10-year-olds. All of the dinosaur bones were fakes; all of the hands-on learning opportunities were stretched, chipped, and inaccurate from too much use. I did get one cool picture, though, shooting from the dinosaur room into kiddie science area:


All in all, Elizabeth and I celebrated learning in a much more meaningful way than did our colleagues stuck on campus.

Painting the Fence

Shortly after I became a tenured faculty member, my colleagues had to choose a representative for faculty senate. At a department meeting, I heard my name being murmured when we reached that agenda item. Naive, I was thrilled to think that the long-tenured ranks wanted me to represent them. Finally, one old fart said, "I nominate Sparky," someone else seconded, and before I knew what had happened, I was appointed to what I believed was an august body that did important, good work.

In reality, the Tom Sawyers of my department had gotten me to paint the fence. They secured their own free time while I did the hard work of attending those dreadful meetings, suckered by flattery and false glamour. Faculty senate could never get anyone to run for secretary, as writing the minutes was a real chore. The secretary had to make sure that she recorded every single administrative slam without giving away any top secret, off-the-record discussion. Since I taught "composition" and was too green to know better, the senate president asked me to act as an interim secretary. I then got to listen to the senate members grumble because I had reduced [on purpose] a three-hour bitchfest and paranoia eruption to a single, single-spaced page, neglecting to record and properly credit the "clever" trumpeting of the most vociferous peacocks in the room.

I gave up my afternoon freedom and own personal writing time to sit in those frustrating meetings [or worse, in front of a computer trying to capture them] in the same way that boys in the Mark Twain novel give up an apple core, a piece of blue bottle-glass, a key that won't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, all for the "glamour" of whitewashing a fence while Tom supervises their work, smirking all the while.

My old fart colleagues weren't the only Tom Sawyers on campus; the administration knew how to hand off a paint brush as well. One day at a brainstorming session for a college-wide initiative, I made a well-received presentation on a solution for a problem. The next day, one of the VPs asked me to chair a large group responsible for producing documents that thousands of future students would use. The glamour of a phone conversation with a big-wig and the flattery that only I could pull off this project got me to give up more personal time for the equivalent of fence-painting labor. The glamour quickly evaporated as I drove all over the city, coordinating work with folks whose real interest was the stipend, not the product, and having to rewrite—or just plain write—their sorry contributions.

I'd been Tom Sawyered a second time.

There's that saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I explain the second fooling this way: I was hoping for an encounter with Mr. Miyagi, of Karate Kid fame, not Tom Sawyer. I was hoping that if I was fence painting once again, that this time it was training to make me a better employee. After the arduous work, I wanted my Mr. Miyagi to boom, "Show me paint-the-fence!" and then, as I demonstrated the skill, he would make the connection between the chore and some greater good. But in academia [perhaps everywhere], few managers are really mentors. Higher ups—either the long-tenured or the administration—are just looking for 1) to get out of work that they don't want to do or 2) to have work done that makes them look good.

I produced excellent documents for the administrators. They are still used ten years after I supervised and edited their writing. But that work is just a pretty fence, not an opportunity for me to grow as a person or an employee. That project wasn't meant to teach me anything, although it did: I learned not to be stupid enough to give up my time—as precious to me as an apple core is to a young boy in a Mark Twain novel—to agree to another paint job.

During lunch on work days, I read a number of blogs from academics, most of whom are younger than I. Sometimes a newly-tenured faculty member, puffed up with an appointment to an "important" committee or assigned an "important" task, brags about becoming a true member of the college community. Maybe these folks have gotten lucky, and Mr. Miyagi is handing them the brush. Maybe it's Tom Sawyer whitewashing them, which they'll discover soon enough. I don't bother posting a comment to warn them. Teaching is the really hard job, and maybe fence painting—more aggravation but less difficult—gets someone out of the classroom for a bit, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Once More to the Lake

Because it has been too hot to tramp around Lake Pamela in school clothes, I haven't brought my camera to school in weeks. That all changed yesterday, a workday without students that allowed me to wear jeans and a T-shirt. I had plenty of time, but the weather didn't want to cooperate: gloomy skies and lots of wind.

I did get to observe that the rainy months of July, August, and September had set the wildflowers into overdrive. If our provost doesn't pay the guys in haz-mat suits to spray Agent Orange-quality herbicide on all the growth, I might get 4 to 6 weeks of really great photo opportunities. I know that she is just trying to reduce the number of snakes and a potential alligator close to campus, but I hate the wasteland that results after the chemical defoliation.

It was too windy for normal dragonfly activity, but I did spy some four-spotted pennants, a species long gone from the lake near home. I saw some males and immatures, like this one, color-morphing into a mature male:


Where most dragonflies hide on a windy day, I don't know. But the Carolina saddlebags were tightly clutching dried twigs that swayed from side to side. I don't know how many I passed before I realized that they were there, weird blooms on dead stems. Almost every gray, weathered twig had a saddlebags on top, its wings pinwheeling in the breeze:



My favorite shot is this close up. The green-blue in the background is the surface of the lake:


I have seen Carolina saddlebags all summer, but always in flight. The last pictures that I took of one were in the spring. Note to self: To photograph saddlebags, look for subjects on windy days.

The Hero Cycle and Cast Away, Part 3

A brief recap of departure and initiation, the first two major portions of the hero cycle [if you don't want to read Part 1, the first post, or Part 2, the second post]:

Stage 1, Call to Adventure = Turbulence wakes Chuck Noland, who is sleeping on a FedEx plane
Stage 2, Refusal of the Call = Noland, denying that the plane is in trouble, goes to the bathroom to wash his face
Stage 3, Supernatural Aid and Amulet = Albert Miller, a pilot, shoves a life raft into Noland's arms
Stage 4, Crossing of the First Threshold = With the help of the life raft, Noland makes it to the surface of the water, his old life sinking with the plane
Stage 5, Belly of the Whale = Noland reaches the deserted island, where he initially has no skills
Stage 6, Road of Trials = Despite the primitive conditions, Noland acquires basic necessities of life: food, shelter, water, companionship
Stage 7, Meeting with the Goddess = The Woman of the Golden Wings makes her appearance as a Port-O-Let, giving Noland the idea to leave the island
Stage 8, Woman as Temptress = Wife-like Wilson brings up his concerns about the dangers of leaving, tempting Noland to stay
Stage 9, Atonement with the Father = Noland sends himself off as a package, not knowing when, where, or if he will ever arrive, submitting to the mysteries of Father Time
Stage 10, Apotheosis, and Stage 11, The Ultimate Boon = Noland, powerful with his aluminum wings, flies over the breakers fencing the island and easily escapes

One advantage of using Cast Away to teach the hero cycle is that the third portion of the adventure gets a detailed treatment. My students and I decided that Chuck Noland met all the required stages of return.

Refusal of the Return: For this stage, my students and I disagreed. I will admit that they made a very strong argument for their case. I have always thought that Noland's refusal was the ease with which he adapts to life on the raft, illustrating his need for "no land" beneath his feet. We see him collect water during a storm and spear fish as he swims nearby. He is able to meet all of his basic needs, just as he did on the island, and I believe that his contentment and ease, his lack of impatience for an immediate rescue, fulfill this stage.

My students, on the other hand, thought that Noland refuses the return when Wilson falls off the raft and floats away. At this later point in life on the ocean, Noland is exhausted; he has lost his sail and the raft is disintegrating. When he discovers that Wilson is bobbing in the water far from the raft, he starts swimming to retrieve him but realizes that he doesn't have the strength. My students argued that if he had continued, he would have drowned, refusing the return in a definitive way. By choosing the relative safety of the raft over Wilson, he allowed the cycle to continue.

Since the stages of return must follow a certain order, the decision to lose Wilson to stay with the raft comes too late for me—other later stages have been met before this scene. But my students, clever people that they are, were still able to work out the rest of the cycle, as you will see.

Magical Flight: Powerful forces, according to Joseph Campbell, either help or hinder the hero's return home. Since I have equated the Woman of the Golden Wings with Athena to Noland's Odysseus, I believe that Noland is hindered when his Athena, represented by the Port-O-Let sail, flaps off into the night during a storm. She helps him off the island but thwarts him on the road back to his old life. Since this scene occurs before the loss of Wilson, the volleyball floating off on strong currents couldn't be, for me, the refusal of return.

My students argued that Noland's magical flight was instead the whale. Whereas I saw the whale only once in the movie, that one star-lit night early in the voyage home, my students believed that the whale had been following the raft ever since. They claimed that water spray was the proof. When Noland first encountered the behemoth, they explained, he was woken by spray. Since he was alerted by similar spray when Wilson fell off the raft, and then again as the ship that rescued him passed behind his back, my students argued that the whale had been watching over him in a protective manner ever since that first night.

Rescue from Without: No one disagreed that Kelly is Noland's call from his old life, the next stage in the cycle. We did have a laugh because a number of students couldn't understand why, when Noland finally sees the freighter, he is hoarsely calling out "Kill me. Kill me." Why, they asked, would he want to die this close to home? Those of us who had ears unruined by constant iPod music clarified that he was saying, "Kelly. Kelly."

Crossing of the Return Threshold: Again, this stage caused some minor disagreement. The appearance of the freighter, Noland's first sight of civilization in four years, full of packages as was his old life, is the crossing for me. My students wanted to wait until he was back on the plane with his buddy Stan, flying to the FedEx festivities. Either way, he transitions back to his modern life.

Master of Two Worlds: As a result of the adventure, the hero acquires skills that allow him to live more fully in his old life and have confidence to venture into the Unknown in the future. The best depiction of Noland's mastery occurs in his hotel room after his friends leave. He picks up a crab leg; he plays with a lighter; he sleeps on the floor. We know that he will be able to eat in a civilized manner at Red Lobster, that he will use the thermostat in his home and the buttons on his stove to control heat, that eventually he will sleep in a bed. Unlike a character in a Jack London story, he hasn't gone crazy during his years of deprivation. But we also know that if he has to spear fish with a sharpened stick, make fire with his bare hands, or get comfortable in a stone cave, that he retains those skills as well. And more importantly, we know that the confidence he has in his abilities to survive dramatically different environments will give him an edge whenever problems arise in his modern life.

Freedom to Live: By modern standards, the pre-crash Chuck Noland was a successful man. He commanded workers below him, jetting around the world insuring the interests of a huge corporation. But he was a slave to time and predictability. At the end of the movie, when he stands in the crossroads without a plan, willing to go not where a schedule dictates but where the moment carries him, then we know that he has true freedom to live.

My students were not unhappy that he loses Kelly. One young man, when Kelly's husband explains that she is unwilling to meet Noland, said, "I'd have beaten the shit out of him." But by the end of the movie, they agreed that his old life was a trap. They thought the artist was beautiful and cheered his decision to pursue her. I believe that they got the hero cycle.

The Hero Cycle and Cast Away, Part 2

A brief recap of departure, the first major portion of the hero cycle [if you don't want to read Part 1, the first post]:

Stage 1, Call to Adventure = Turbulence wakes Chuck Noland, who is sleeping on a FedEx plane
Stage 2, Refusal of the Call = Noland, denying that the plane is in trouble, goes to the bathroom to wash his face
Stage 3, Supernatural Aid and Amulet = Albert Miller, a pilot, shoves a life raft into Noland's arms
Stage 4, Crossing of the First Threshold = With the help of the life raft, Noland makes it to the surface of the water, his old life sinking with the plane
Stage 5, Belly of the Whale = Noland reaches the deserted island, where he initially has no skills

The real meat of the adventure happens in the second major portion, initiation. At this point, the hero faces many challenges which, if he successfully meets them, provide opportunity for growth in knowledge and competence. My students and I concluded that Noland does finish all of initiation.

Road of Trials: Once the hero is swallowed into the unknown, lost to his old life, he discovers that he must acquire new skills to survive. Food pulled easily from a refrigerator or pantry and nuked in the microwave is no longer possible for Noland; neither is closing the snug door of his home to keep out the elements, or calling a friend by phone for companionship and conversation. So the next thing we observed was his slow development of basic survival skills: opening coconuts, finding shelter and water, building fire to cook crab, acquiring a companion in Wilson, the volleyball, and doctoring himself when he removes his own abscessed tooth. The degree of competence he develops living in primitive conditions is beautifully illustrated when the movie flashes forward four years, and the viewer finds a tan, lithe Noland easily spearing his dinner with the same ease he would have unwrapped a Filet-O-Fish in his old life.

Meeting with the Goddess: Noland has his own Athena, the Woman of the Golden Wings, who is a constant presence during his island adventure, just as Athena aided Odysseus in his long journey home from the Trojan War. Noland first encounters his goddess drawn on the one FedEx package that, after it washes ashore, he does not open. The mysterious contents—a waterproof satellite phone, perhaps?—give the package a palpable power. The goddess makes a big appearance in his life when she manifests as the Port-O-Let banging against the rocks on the beach. Noland retrieves the mangled aluminum and stands it in the sand where it resembles an abstract angel. He and Wilson then sit in a circle with her until Noland finally understands her message, that he needs wings himself to get past the breakers that fence the island. Her gift of wings in the guise of the Port-O-Let is the one thing Noland must have to continue his journey.

Woman as Temptress: In this stage of the cycle, physical pleasures, usually offered by a woman, tempt the hero to leave the uncomfortable adventure. When Noland realizes that his gift of "wings" can get him past the breakers, Wilson brings up the dangers and uncertainties of leaving. The island certainly isn't modern life, but it does offer the comfort of a full belly, the protection of a stone cave. Wilson, the nagging wife-like fragment split from Noland's personality, unsuccessfully tempts our hero with the island herself, Gaia, Mother Earth.

Atonement with the Father: I think that Noland experiences Campbell's "at one ment" with Father Time. In this stage, the hero must come to realize that he shares a belief or ability with a strong male—his biological father, a father figure, a masculine force. Until atonement, the hero previously thought himself incapable of having this belief or ability. This semester, we discussed both Luke Skywalker, who at first thinks he is incapable of going over to the dark side of the Force as Darth Vader did but then realizes that he too can entertain the temptation; and Neo, who at first believes he is incapable of the same level of commitment that Morpheus models but then demonstrates it himself as he rescues Morpheus from the Agents. Sometimes the "father" is evil, like Darth Vader, or good, like Morpheus. Either way, the father represents a force initially in opposition to the hero but one which the hero eventually embraces.

At the beginning of the movie, Noland believes that time is consistent and controllable. A package sent from the United States to Russia should arrive in x hours, every time, even if one has to steal a bicycle from a crippled child to finish the delivery. Noland realizes, however, as he is about to launch his raft, that time is inconsistent and mysterious, a fact he must accept as he sends himself as a package back home, not knowing when, or where, or even if, he will arrive.

Apotheosis and the Ultimate Boon: The last two stages of initiation quickly follow one another. The hero recognizes his superior ability and completes a difficult task with ease. Noland had demonstrated that he was a frail, puny human after he first arrived on the island. One night he spied a light on the horizon and got back in his life raft to paddle out to it. The island, at this point, would not let him leave. The waves easily repelled his efforts, gashing his leg on the sharp coral, as the water threw him back to the beach.

With his gift of Port-O-Let wings and a new raft he has built himself, Noland challenges the breakers again. Whereas the waves easily beat him back as an island neophyte four years ago, now Noland has the skill to fly right over them. Even to himself, he must feel he has god-like abilities in comparison to the man who washed ashore after the plane crash. Leaving the island so easily is his ultimate boon.

Tomorrow ... Noland is now ready to return, the third major portion of the cycle!

The Hero Cycle and Cast Away, Part 1

The research class I teach requires that students also receive an introduction to literature. They buy a reader that includes poems, short stories, and plays. Individual faculty then determine how much time they will devote to the literature portion of the class. My colleagues who have degrees in literature [and who resent the heavy load of composition classes required by a community college] will often spend the entire semester in the reader, making students explore a specific author and his/her works to satisfy the research portion of the class. Those of us who see the course as a composition class spend the biggest chunk of time on a non-literary research essay and just dip our toes into reader.

As usual, I used the Joseph Campbell hero cycle to frame our study of a handful of poems, short stories, and songs, hoping that my students would find the literature more engaging if we weren't analyzing poetic meter or picking out critic-contrived symbols. Poems, short stories, and songs contain parts of the hero cycle but never the whole adventure, so I always end the unit with a movie so that they can see the seventeen-stage cycle play out.

For years I used The Matrix, but then I wrote about that experience in this blog and didn't want one of my students to type "hero cycle matrix" into Google to discover all of my thinking ready to plagiarize. So the following semester we watched Finding Nemo, another successful movie to discuss, but I wrote about that one here too, ruining it for future classes.

This semester I chose Cast Away, and our discussion was so lively that I think this film choice was my best yet [which, of course, I'm ruining again by writing about it]. In Cast Away, the three main portions of the hero cycle—departure, initiation, return—have crystal clear lines of demarcation: Charles Noland, Tom Hanks' character, begins the movie as a typical, technology-dependent, modern man. He survives a plane crash and washes ashore on a deserted island where he must live a primitive existence to survive. After he successfully navigates a series of life-changing challenges, he eventually returns to his old life.

This movie was a three-day affair. On the first day, we watched through the scene when Noland discovers that the troubling thumps he hears in the undergrowth are just coconuts falling from the palm trees. Learning to open those coconuts begins his "road of trials," the first stage of initiation, the second major portion of the hero cycle.

My students and I divided up departure, the first major portion, like this:

Call to Adventure: Some students wanted the beeper that interrupts Christmas dinner to be Noland's call to adventure, but most of us thought that he accepted that invitation too easily. A real hero must at first refuse the call. The students who liked the beeper argued that he makes the plane wait once he gets to the FedEx hub, signifying a type of refusal, or at least a delay.

Maybe. But most of us thought that the call happens after the plane is in flight. We decided the plane itself communicates the call to adventure with its bad behavior, waking him from sleep with turbulence.

Refusal of the Call: Once Noland awakens, he tries to joke about the turbulence with the pilots. The pilots brush him off; everything in their actions and words indicate that the jet is in serious trouble.

Noland is not ready to give up his predictable, modern life, so he refuses the call to adventure by denying that he heard one in the first place. He grabs his shaving kit from his luggage and, despite a warning to sit down and buckle up, goes to the bathroom to wash his face. He's hoping, I'm sure, that when he exits the tiny, safe bathroom space, all will be well. Escaping to the bathroom to groom is his refusal of the call.

Supernatural Aid: Instead of finding that the flight has returned to normal, Noland is nearly ripped out of the bathroom from cabin depressurization. According to Joseph Campbell, a wise figure bearing amulets for the difficult journey ahead must next appear. For Noland, that supernatural aid is Albert Miller, one of the pilots. It is Miller who gives up his own oxygen mask so that Noland can breathe; it is Miller again who shoves the life raft into Noland's arms. The life raft is the amulet that Noland must have to continue his journey.

We watched as the plane hit the Pacific Ocean. Unless a person has survived such a crash, I doubt it's possible to appreciate what happens next. Robert Zemeckis, the movie director, has conveniently lit the crash scene so that the viewer can see water rushing into the fuselage and the plane sinking, but in real life I'd bet that the dark and shock would be so disorienting that determining the right direction to escape would be impossible. Noland, however, has the raft, and the air that fills it knows how to find the surface. Without that gift from Miller, Noland would have failed to finish the stages of departure, drowning with the crew.

Crossing of the First Threshold: I believe that when Noland throws himself into the raft and finds himself floating on the dark, rough sea, soaking wet and devoid of a schedule, he crosses the first threshold. He has left the dry, usually dependable, everyday airplane, finding himself instead in a wet raft ready to shirk its responsibility and flip him back into the water. There is no turning back; the adventure has begun.

One of my very bright students had a more symbolic crossing. She believed that when Noland is taking stock after washing ashore on the island and discovers that both his watch from Kelly, his fiancée, and his beeper are now inoperable, he crosses the threshold at that moment, leaving his time-organized life for a "time-less" existence on the island.

Belly of the Whale: We all agreed that the island is the belly of the whale, the place where the hero is lost, to be reborn—if he survives the next major portion of the cycle—a new, better man.


Tomorrow ... Part 2!

Now Where's My Real Present?

Every Christmas I purchase gift cards for my family. Occasionally I will try a present that requires a box, but my family usually has only complaints or looks of disappointment after they unwrap whatever I thoughtfully chose—a biography of Ronald Reagan for my Republican-loving grandmother, for example—so I usually make the trek to Wal-Mart for Grandma, Target for my nephews, and a nice restaurant for the parents, where I buy gift cards that allow family members to make their own purchasing decisions.

This year I thought I would give everyone a one-of-a-kind present in which I had invested hours of creative work. I created an account at Kodak EasyShare Gallery, uploaded some of my best dragonfly pictures, and created a prototype 2007 calendar that I could share with the family. The calendars cost only $20 apiece, less than I would usually put on a gift card, so I would spend less money than usual. But how could they put a price on an original work of art?

My prototype arrived last week. I was impressed with the turnaround time: less than one week from the day I paid online until I found the package in my mailbox. I would grade the print quality a B, not as sharp and as evenly colored as my ideal vision but a very nice job nonetheless, well worth the 20 bucks.

For the cover I chose a photo that I personally like, but I thought might be too "busy" for someone to have to stare at for an entire month. It is an Eastern amberwing female perched on a spent black-eyed susan deep in a bed of the flowers:

For the first month of the new year, I chose a happy blue dasher male "smiling" at the camera:


For February, I picked this female four-spotted pennant. Her orange abdomen thrown up in the air like a warming thermometer seems a good symbol for humans ready for winter to end:


In honor of spring and St. Patrick's Day, I chose one of the greenest pictures I had for March:


And since the primary colors in this next picture—the greens, yellows, and pinks—are reminiscent of Easter eggs, I'm using this scarlet skimmer female for April:


Heat, humidity, and rampant plant growth characterize summer in Florida, so I picked this Halloween pennant female for May. Her warm markings against the green background colors represent the start of our hot season.


And for June, I decided I liked this female blue dasher, the rain drops on the flower buds typical of the afternoon thunderstorms we can expect:


Since we celebrate the 4th in July, I chose this Carolina saddlebags male because of his red tones against the blue sky, the colors of the holiday:


By August, the heat has exhausted a lot of Florida plants, so I used this roseate skimmer female for her appropriate colors:


In September, if I lived in the North, the leaves would change colors, and this photo of an Eastern amberwing male captures the brilliance of the deciduous trees losing their foliage:


For October, I picked this mature male four-spotted pennant, his black color typical of Halloween demons. In the prototype, this photo reproduced the most poorly, so I will probably switch it out for something else, maybe a male Halloween pennant who has the right shade of orange for this month's holiday.


For November, a "dead" month, cold and gray, I chose this male Halloween pennant. This photo also didn't reproduce that well, so I will probably change it out too:


And for December, I chose this immature four-spotted pennant, one of my favorite photos from Lake Pamela:


I think my family will think, Oh, nice, a calendar. Now where's my real present? My hours of creative work won't matter as much as their moments of pleasure spending the money on the gift cards they anticipate. Perhaps I will just buy them those gift cards and share the calendars with my more appreciative friends.

The Importance of Showing Up

I didn't really want to go out with the camera this afternoon because I've been taking crappy pictures lately. But I decided that even if I didn't shoot anything interesting, I would at least have a good sweat in the hot sun. So I drove over to my favorite haunt, Leu Gardens, and went in pursuit of my usual quarry, bugs.

While I was in the "home demonstration" garden, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to discover a hummingbird dipping among the blossoms. I aimed the camera and began shooting; luckily, I heard the Canon singing, "Beep! Beep! Beep!" which means I'm in good light and the lens is correctly focused. I am very happy with the photos:



I wouldn't have gotten these pictures, though, if I hadn't shown up. All creative work requires that the artist get her ass to the easel, computer, studio—wherever—to try at least, since the art isn't going to create itself.

I haven't been showing up at this blog very often of late. Lots of good ideas for posts have slipped right out of my brain because I have allowed too much time to elapse between getting the idea and sitting down to write.

I am planning to amend my ways, however. My goal for the entire month of October is to write here every day more. I recently purchased and read No One Cares What You Had for Lunch, a collection of ideas for blog posts. I won't be writing long, thoughtful daily essays, but I hope to produce 31 many quality posts over the next month. I have to show up if the art is going to happen!