Cloister Commentary, Day 75: Boogids!

COVID-19 Test: Up my nose with a very long Q-Tip! The health worker who tested me had gotten so good at the process that, when she experienced some difficulty breaching my right nostril, she had another swab up my left and out before I even knew what was going on. I swear I saw her grin just before we drove away.

Stephens virtual class: I love this Zoom stuff! (I have a history in my teaching career of loving stuff I start out hating or vociferously arguing against. I’m not very smart.)

First-ever absentee ballot: 100% success. Thanks, fellow voters, for supporting the school bond in these tough times.

Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman: Even the acknowledgments choked me up a bit; on other fronts, it includes some of the sweetest and wittiest discussions about and depictions of sex I’ve ever read, and I now know “boogid” is Chippewa slang for “fart” (there’s a female character who always boogids immediately after eating a hard-boiled egg).

Neighborhood: Nicole and I read and enjoyed a cocktail on our front porch without all hell breaking loose in our vicinity.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

The warm twang of this great Floridian graces a brand new and very solid album, but I always turn in this direction when I “need” him.

Cloister Commentary, Day 73: Citizens of Minneapolis

After days of waiting for the right morning, we drove to Capen Park, hiked up to a gorgeous bluff overlook our friend George Frissell had shown us long ago, then walked an additional couple of miles over to Old 63 and back. It was the perfect start for a morning in these times.

We also had Zoom escapades. Nicole walked me through some tips and tricks–she’s more practiced than I–so now I can confidently share a screen and won’t create a waiting room in the middle of a class. I DO need a haircut, but I’m working on my inner and outer Jeff Bridges. Shortly after my training, my parents and brother joined as for a virtual hangout and we were glad to hear everyone’s doing ok.

If you haven’t read Louise Erdrich, you really should. She’s not just one of the greatest Native novelists to ever publish, she’s one of the greatest novelists we’ve known, period. There’s a whole world in her books, and her most recent one, The Night Watchman, which I’m about to finish, is a compulsive read. A citizen of Minneapolis, I am sure she has some new work brewing in her capacious brain.

I am not a fan of destruction. But in the case of that connected to the current protests–and JUST that destruction, not that caused by opportunists and outside agents–I understand it. Why do buildings have to burn? Before we get to that question, first, why have black men and women been killed by police (official and unofficial) with impunity, over and over again, throughout our history? As one activist leader said, “They sent the military, and we only asked them for arrests.” So much of what we have seen could easily have been avoided by a doing of the right thing. Second, I have felt the urge to smash sh*t up and stab at my own self out of frustration–and I’m about as privileged as a U. S. citizen can be. I can easily imagine how frustrated I would be if I enjoyed none of that privilege, and came to the (quite sane) conclusion that nothing I could ever do would stop the authorized oppression and threat to my (and my friends’ and families’) life and limb that seem like my country’s preferred ways. It’s well past time for a sea change. If you don’t get it but would like to, I can suggest plenty of enlightening and meticulously sourced books. If you don’t get it and either don’t want to or don’t care? I guess all I can do is retweet John Donne to you: “No man is an island, entire of itself.”

Mary, I do indeed wish George was here to talk to about this…

Streaming for shut-ins:

Spiritual fuel.

Cloister Commentary, Day 66: Afraid of The Braid

I think both of us would say our favorite moment yesterday was reading with the cats downstairs in “the office.” Junior is still oddly “afraid of the braid”; when Nicole simply flips hers, that kitten’s like shot out of a cannon. Accompanying our time was Fela’s The Best of Black President, Volume 2, and besides having Cleocatra glued to me, I had the work of two of my favorite writers, Octavia Butler and Louise Erdrich, in hand. My reading is starting to recover from sudden loss: I managed a little over 100 pages and suffered much less drift than the last four days.

We waited too late to partake of live Shakespeare from The Stratford Festival (via YouTube), but we did finally take in Judy. “She wore out,” Ray Bolger said at Garland’s funeral, and Renee Zellweger did a convincing job of illlustrating both that and the flame that was snuffed. I may have to seek out a book.

My gut is still churning regarding my upcoming virtual comp class for Stephens. It’s a week away, I’ve taught comp for 36 years, I’m totally prepared in terms of course material and my on-line platform, I’ve been using educational technology since ’02, I am normally chomping at the bit to be unleashed on students, but for some reason the specter of appearing via Zoom, trying to communicate my energy, manipulating digital controls, striving to get to know my students so I can individualize a bit, wondering what part of me will be missing from my presentation, and fighting the light reflecting off the lenses of my reading glasses just gives me the fan-tods. I need to accept it; if I want to teach decently in the fall, I’m gonna need to have it down. Yes, I’ve done it before, back in April, but it felt like an emergency and only three-four students showed up each session (I had a very small class as it was). I hate this boorish sentence but I will say it to myself: “Get over it.”

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

On Memorial Day, I always think of this great jazz violinist, who fought in the Vietnam War.

Cloister Commentary, Day 54: Stuff

School stuff: Nicole worked on enrollment and I laid out an Excel schedule for assignments and activities for my upcoming virtual dual-credit comp class. I’ve never had a more mysterious picture of my audience so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Food stuff: I bet we’re not alone in this mess in preparing big batches of food to be eaten across several days. We were sad to see the end of a stellar pot of red beans and rice. Also, we both recommend the Burmese restaurant Tiger Chef to Columbians searching for good curbside.

Cat stuff: Since this pandemic started, we’ve watched our kitten Junior, who turns one in a couple weeks, become the longest, tallest, leanest cat of the bunch–and we have a bunch. If he grows into his tail…

Clothes stuff: We’re still not comfortable going into a store and shopping for clothes (I’m not comfortable shopping for them period), so we ordered some items on-line. My favorite going-on-20-year-old slippers bit the dust yesterday after we determined the strange here-and-gone funk we’d been sniffing was emanating from them. They’d also worn through in three places. But that’s a sign they were just getting perfect.

Music stuff: Nicki Minaj is on point on the new Doja Cat remix.

Book stuff: I awakened having cleared the reading decks, so I read the first 20 pages of each of four new ones. Octavia Butler and Louise Erdrich are the level of writer that you can (if you have no obligations) read all day long. Butler’s Kindred and Erdrich’s new The Night Watchman have their hooks in deep already.

Film stuff: Inspired by weird Facebook prohibitory actions, we spent two powerful hours remembering the great and painfully missed Molly Ivins in a Hulu documentary called Raise Hell! Do we need her, but are we also glad she didn’t have to see what she predicted. Reading her kept us sane during the last half of the ’90s and the beginning of the ‘Oughts.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

I’ve been staring at a compilation of this band’s work from our couch every morning. Time to act. Their debut album wastes no time kicking butt.