Boricua en la Luna

The idea

2012-02-11T12:20:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, when I first conceived of the idea that we would, someday, come and live in front of the beach in Puerto Rico, I had no notion of how or when that thought would find its fruition. As we end our first full week here, I am deeply grateful that the experience has been as I first imagined it, lovely and restorative.

We walk practically everywhere so we're getting plenty of exercise (my husband more than I because he runs and walks up and down the stairs several times a day--two times going up is usually my maximum and then I opt for the rickety elevator), we don't have to hurry home, as my husband likes to point out, to tend to needy furry children (which I don't mind at all and even miss), and there is no set schedule for the days that unfold as they will.

Unless we're invited out by friends, we usually stay in and my husband fixes a quick lunch and what I'm calling his "Dagwood Sandwiches," with the pan de agua we both like so much. There's always walking on the beach and each day we see or discover something new and interesting or are regaled with a vista that is breathtaking in its beauty.

I've got to say that getting work done in this environment is ideal, even beyond how I first imagined it so many years ago. Must be because the brain, unencumbered by other concerns and busy-ness, can dedicate its neurons to the task at hand and ideas come fruitfully and the time is always there to get them down on paper, or to sit and read, something I find so difficult back home when there's always something else to do or somewhere else to go.

This morning, after our daily hour-walk to and from the nearby Starbucks, we stopped at the panadería for some baked goods and I was struck by the bounty of delicious confections that were available. My husband got a dessert with dulce de leche and almonds, and I picked up a huge mallorca (the pastry at bottom left) and a slice of flan de queso for dessert at some not-far future time.

As to the weather, my desktop icon that tells the weather back home in Ohio said 18 degrees this morning and snowy, but the seven-day outlook for this island of glorious beauty is a lot more promising. I have to admit that while I am counting the days until I go home, a part of me doesn't want those days to go way too quickly.

Reconnecting

2012-02-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

Another thing allowed by being in Puerto Rico for an extended period of time with no set agenda (other than the scholarly work that needs to get done) is reconnecting with friends that I haven't been able to see much of when I've been here before.

Usually, that has been for shorter periods of time and/or to tend to family matters and this time, for the first time, it feels very different. Thus, yesterday, I was able to spend, lo que nunca, almost three hours catching up with my best high school friend (we've been friends since 1974!) at a nearby panadería where my husband and I can walk to from our temporary home-away-from-home. It was my friend's day off from his demanding job as a pediatrician and it worked perfectly for us to meet up there and enjoy good Puerto Rican-style sandwiches while we reconnected.

The ability to walk everywhere is part of the reason why I'm so very glad that we decided to rent an apartment in the area where we are. Not only is it much cheaper and comfortable than a hotel room (we're paying about $76/night for an efficiency that has everything we need to do our work and to be comfortable) but we save tons of money because we can prepare our own food. The kitchenette area, which is nothing more than a closet, is serviceable and clean and my husband enjoys making lunch for both of us on the days we haven't gone out to catch up with friends.

He runs on the beach a few times a week and then we take a long walk to the nearby Starbucks, and then I climb the stairs to the seventh-floor apartment at least once a day so I may return home a little more fit than I was when I arrived with all this walking and climbing stairs.

I've also finally realized how productive I can be during this leave when I have uninterrupted time to get my work done without having to attend meetings, plan events, meet with students, or many of the other things I did last semester. All in all, while I miss being home with my furry children and in my beloved old house, I am very glad we decided to do this and that the fellowship I won enabled us to do so.

If we finally sell the country house near my small college on the hill, I might just create a "Puerto Rico Fund" so that we can spend at least two weeks every year here, maybe even right in this tiny studio that has been so welcoming to us this time.

Caribbean blues are anything but sad

2012-02-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

Every time I come back to Puerto Rico I'm reminded that you can't know the sheer brilliance of the color blue until you've been to the Caribbean. Green is another color that is completely redefined by the tropics.

This is only our fourth day here but it feels like much longer because we've more or less settled into a nice routine. Each morning, we walk about two miles round trip to a nearby hotel for my Starbucks and a copy of the local newspaper. My husband runs on the beach three miles every other day and then walks with me and we've made the point of going up the stairs to our seventh-floor studio at least once a day. Thus, we're both getting quite a workout, which is good, given that Puerto Rican food isn't generally low fat.

The long walks and working in the comfy studio, right across from a large supermarket, have now become our routine and I'm making good progress on my list of projects that need to get done while we're here. The best part is that, at the end of several hours of non-stop work on the computer, we can both take a break, walk downstairs, and spend some time gazing at the most brilliant blues and greens imaginable.

Not a bad day's work. No, not at all.

¡Puerto Rico!

2012-02-05T07:50:00.000-05:00

A little over 24-four hours after leaving Ohio, we find ourselves in a tiny studio apartment near the beach in Puerto Rico, where we'll be spending some time thanks to my research fellowship this year. We'd always dreamed to escaping the worst of winter back home but never had the time or the means to do so, and this became our opportunity.

It's not a vacation, by any means, since while here I have to revise a chapter for an edited collection, which is due Feb. 22nd, revise the second chapter for my book project and start writing the third, and prepare a talk on my book project, which I've been invited to give at Ohio State on March 2nd. Also while here, I've been invited to give four talks, record a television program, and do a recruitment presentation for my small college on a hill to juniors at the high school where I used to teach.

But at least I get to do all that while overlooking (well, from a side window) the beautiful ocean and while being en mi país. We arrived last evening, after two flights and all the stress that always assails me when traveling, and were greeted by my mom to a delicious dinner of her inimitable arroz y habichuelas and a half of a local aguacate, which put to shame all the puny, wrinkled so-called avocados I can get in Ohio, and our favorite Pan Pepín.

This morning, my husband is already off for a run on the beach and then we plan to take a long walk to the closest Starbucks. Then, we'll see what the day has planned for us before I start on my list of "to dos," which seems less daunting precisely because I get to work on it from here.

Green thumbs

2012-01-28T19:16:00.018-05:00

It was not until I arrived in Ohio nearly 11 years ago (can't believe it'll be that long in March!) that I began to explore the rewards and vicissitudes of gardening, something that, as a born and bred "city girl," I'd never really had the chance to learn about as I was growing up.

Although my first attempts at planting were not very successful, especially with regard to my beloved peonies, because I didn't know much about how to garden, I slowly learned (replanted all the peonies I had mis-planted so they faced the sun) and now can say that I have inherited at least part of the famous green thumb of my abuela, whose roses and potted plants were gorgeous and whose plantain and lemon trees were famously bountiful. I am not quite that successful but at least I do a lot better than when I first started.

One of the features my husband and I love best about this old house is its garden, which my papi used to call the jardín mágico because of all the birds, squirrels, rabbits, and even an opossum, that lived in it and because of the flowering trees and many flowers that we planted in it over the years we were here.

Today, I spent a couple of hours doing some weeding and cutting back of overgrown plants in the small garden that has been basically abandoned for the years we were not here. Everything needed a good trimming and the dessicated weeds needed to be pulled and cut back. I haven't worked that hard in the garden since we moved out of here so it was a nice feeling to see the fruit of my labor and to look forward to spring (winter is more than halfway done, as my husband keeps pointing out) when we can restore this magical garden to its former glory.

One of the major components of the garden, a water feature, was taken out because our tenants were afraid of the potential hazard to their toddler. My husband built it many years ago in the shape of a rock bath for birds. Though it will not function as a water feature ever again, I do love the labor that he put into creating the "natural" rock formation and today I placed a small ceramic dish where the plastic tub used to be and cleared the rock feature of weeds and years of accumulated debris, hoping that the birds will want to start using it again as it accumulates rain water.

Lizzy came to see what I was doing and I snapped this picture of her, almost posing, in her new backyard. We don't think she misses the country estate's rambling yard where she could run at full speed down the nearly acre-long expanse to catch her ball. She seems pretty content here though she can't get up to those speeds to chase her ball or toy because here she sees a lot more squirrels and people and even other dogs walking down the back alley.

As people who don't like anything about winter, we both look forward to spring. But this year's change of season will be even more special because we're both excited about making this the jardín mágico that so enchanted us long ago.

A family that watches TV together...

2012-01-23T20:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why but both Hamlet and Darwin are a lot mellower in this house than they were in the "country estate," and often, when I sit on the sofa to watch TV, all the furry children (well, except for Evil Magellan) want to be on or near my lap, as this photograph attests.

Now that we're pretty much settled here, and the house in the country continues to get some traffic (one more showing today and one "Under consideration" from the three showings on Saturday), I'm looking forward to getting back to my research so that I can finish the book manuscript on time (by June 1st is my deadline, August 31st is the publisher's). The move and its concomitant and unending "to do" lists have not been conducive to getting work done so I haven't had a chance to do much more than think about my project for the past three weeks. I hope to get back on the groove starting Wednesday (tomorrow I go up to my small college on the hill).

In addition to my book work, I received two readers' comments on a chapter I'm contributing to an edited collection of Transcendentalist women and they were very encouraging although also very demanding in the changes they suggested. All of the suggestions make sense and will make the chapter much better than it is right now so I want and need to devote a good amount of time to re-thinking that work. The editors wanted me to turn it around mid-February but I asked for more time since the changes will be substantial. The good thing is that I know where I have to go with that piece and am excited to get started.

This semester I'm going to finally honor my research leave and am cutting back on most, if not all, of the service endeavors I was involved in last semester. Except for only a few projects, I am going to devote my time to what it needs to be mostly devoted to: getting my scholarship finished. And I think that being away from the campus definitely helps because the distractions and possibilities for deviating from that purpose are significantly less.

Even though my basement office here tends to be much colder in winter than I'd prefer, I like that it's quiet and secluded and I can close the door and focus. I also like that when I need to take a break, there's lots of good options to do so. For example, today was a hard day of a visit to the endodontist in the morning and then two visits to my general dentist, all in the span of three hours. What's the best way to end a day like that? Well, we decided to walk Lizzy to the nearby Jeni's Ice Cream and my husband enjoyed some Whiskey and Pecans ice cream while I chose The Milkiest Chocolate in the World.

It's definitely true what they say, that all is well that ends well.

Let sleeping cats lie

2012-01-21T10:34:00.000-05:00

Three cats on our bed in our small bedroom in the old house in the tiny city is an unusual sight. I don't remember ever seeing the three of them on the bed in our "country estate," so this may bode well for the future of cat relations in this household (though a fight over the cat tree this morning between the two male cats did much to contradict such hopes).

Interestingly, neither Hamlet (the black cat to the right) nor Darwin (the gray tabby to the left) have expressed any interest in remaining outside when we've given them supervised outings. This is especially surprising in Hamlet who used to roam far and wide away from our house near my small college on the hill. So far, in fact, that sometimes you could hear him coming through the tinkling of his collar bell from a long distance. But the move (and spending about 1.5 hours outside one morning when he woke us up at 4 a.m. and then again at 6 a.m. and Lance put him outside, as we used to do in the other house) seems to have cured Hamlet of his wanderlust, at least for now.

We have settled nicely into a routine here though not everything is at it should be or as we want it to be but I keep telling myself that patience is a virtue and that all will get done in its own time (and definitely before I start teaching again in the fall!). For now, things around the old house are more or less comfortably arranged and we now can find most of what we need so that's a sign of progress.

Meanwhile, the "country estate" is up for sale and while we know that January is the worst month to hit the market it's hard to think that no one is interested in the house, at least not yet. But I'm a hopeful person so I know how to hope and wait. (My husband just came in to say that there are three showings of the house today! Here's to hope!)

For a week, we've been pet-sitting for one of our "college daughters" (students who have, for one reason or another, become like family to us), and Zooey, a reddish tabby, adapted terrifically well to our household, which (until later today) has consisted of six furry children. Zooey has clearly expressed her preference for my husband, spending long hours on his lap, and I am thankful that she and Chiquita have enjoyed chasing each other and playing, which gives the Chihuahua some much-needed attention and exercise (since no one else in the household wants to play with her).

Yesterday afternoon, I bought a small webcam that my husband set up for me so I could Skype from my computer here. I intend to offer Skype office hours this semester (to the few advisees I have) and next fall, when I start teaching again, as a way to make up for the time I won't be on campus anymore. Yesterday, I had my first Skype session with one of my informal advisees (she's not an English major but comes to me often for advise of all kinds) and it was a success. I used to have "chat" office hours when I taught at OSU, which were really well attended so I think this idea also will work well and give students face-time without my having to be up there.

Being here has allowed us to do things we would have never dreamed of doing up in the town near my small college on the hill. Not only have I had the chance to reconnect with girl friends I hadn't seen in a long time, which has meant having company to go to the movies or to try a new tea salon, but my husband and I also got to attend a fundraiser for the Columbus Dance Theater last night. It was in a downtown theater we'd never been to and it gave us the chance to have a very nice dinner, meet new people, and watch a lovely dance performance. I felt like a little girl being taken to the ballet for the first time (that's how unusual it is for us to do such a thing on a Friday night). One of the highlights of the evening was seeing my very handsome husband dress up in his dark suit and black coat. He was the best-looking man there!

I'm also really appreciating the ability to simply walk out the door to take Lizzy for her walk (I used to have to drive her to my small college on the hill or to the nearby town), and as I walk these streets I know so well, I have come to realize that this place is full of good and happy memories for me. Geni and Rusty were alive here, as was my dad, and nothing sad or traumatic happened to us during the years we occupied this house. Thus, it's a happy place and that's, I'm sure, why it feels so much like the home we left and have now returned to.

Hell froze!

2012-01-14T12:22:00.000-05:00

So far, winter has been mild here in Ohio where we've basically basked (for this season) in higher-than-average temperatures. But that all ended yesterday when an aptly named Arctic Blast swept through and took no prisoners.

Yesterday, by the time I sat here to check e-mail and do some work, the temperatures outside where in the teens and the windchill was -1. When I went to walk Lizzy in the evening, the snow was falling in earnest and the streets were nearly deserted under what looked like near blizzard conditions.

But being back in the tiny city next to the capital means that when we get in the car we can actually go somewhere fun, not just for necessities, so my husband and I took a break and drove to a nearby café so we could sit in front of the fireplace, he sipping decaf and me enjoying their great hot chocolate.

I'm really enjoying being so close to so many fun places and on Thursday got a chance to reconnect with girl friends I hadn't seen in a long time as we went to a nearby tea house where I had a "Zen" blend that prepared me well for the sushi lunch and hot-stone massage I enjoyed with another good friend later that day. All within 20 minutes of our old house.

Today, the weather isn't as unkind and the snow has stopped blowing and drifting although temperatures are in the twenties, which feels almost comfortable compared to yesterday when this old drafty house couldn't find the way to keep itself warm. We'll definitely have to replace the storm windows at some point, another improvement for the already growing list of work that the poor old house needs.

And while we know that the house does need a lot of TLC, it's not something that frustrates either one of us (at least not right now). On the contrary, we both feel like it'll be nice to revamp the house and make it look better and be more comfortable for ourselves as we continue to make our lives here.

My husband just came in, after working outside and in the garage for a while, to comment that lore has it that no matter how big a garage is built, there is moment when it seems like it should have been four-feet bigger. "I have reached that point," he said, smiling. Our garage here is much smaller than in our erstwhile "country estate" so he's had to be more creative in arranging his motorcycles and my car and the lawn mower, etc.

Indeed, everything is cozier here and we're getting used to running into each other in the small kitchen space, about half the size of the one we used to have. But I wouldn't change it. Home is, indeed, where the heart is.

New year, big changes!

2012-01-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

I'm a firm believer that the best thing God made was one day after another. Each day presents itself as an opportunity for re-invention, for changing what we don't like about ourselves or our lives, for re-evaluating and re-calibrating our relationships, our external influences.

2012 dawned such a year for us with a move back to our old house (built in 1930) in the tiny city next to the capital of the state. We left this house and rented it in 2008 when I was given a tenure-track position in my small college on the hill. Last fall, we started thinking long and hard about the possibility of coming back, after the tenants wanted to have the house tested for lead and the estimate for fixing a part of the problem (common in all houses built before 1978) was financially daunting. When the tenants notified us that they were moving out, ironically unrelated to the lead issue, what was a thought became a reality. While there was a good chance that this house could be re-rented easily, the likelihood that we'd get as good tenants was remote and now that we've moved back we've noticed how much the house itself has deteriorated, as it would continue to do so since we would not want to invest much on it while it was being rented.

The truth is that while we've loved our spacious house near my small college on the hill, it was more isolated and isolating than either one of us liked. We're both walking people and I couldn't easily walk anywhere, not even to take the dogs out, except on the lovely nearby trails. But those same trails have been nearly impassable this year because of the record rain, which has turned them into mud pits, making them a whole lot less attractive or functional.

Thus, we moved on Three Kings Day, a fitting present for both of us, because we have found that we have a special place in our hearts for this old house, despite its many problems and its constant need for attention and maintenance. One of its greatest challenges is the 90-degree turn at the top of the stairs, which made it impossible for my husband and his moving helper to get our box spring to our bedroom. Or a large chair to his office, as we'd originally planned. We have Plan B for the box spring, which we'll be trying this weekend, hopefully, since sleeping without a box spring is something I haven't done since my college days.

Yesterday, we were able to move enough cooking utensils and pots so that I was finally able to make a home-cooked meal on our gas stove (another thing we really like about this house) and by this morning, Lizzy and Hamlet were already riveted by the huge flock of sparrows visiting the old, rusted feeder, which had been abandoned since we moved out.

I thoroughly cleaned the feeder, re-filled it, and today it's like we've never been gone. There's tons of work to do in the house to get it to where we want it, and once our situation stabilizes after the other house is either sold or rented, we'll make more improvements here. We've always joked that we revamp our houses and then leave them so that other people enjoy the changes, not us. But this time we're committed, God willing, to staying here and making the most of this house for ourselves.

In the end, this house is much older and smaller than our "country estate," as a friend described it, and my office is now in the basement, lacking the window with a view to the backyard. But, as my husband said this morning: "This feels like home." And I agree. We've definitely come back.

¡Feliz Año 2012!

2011-12-31T12:03:00.002-05:00

Last family picture with my dad in July 2009

As I have done in these virtual pages since 2007, when I started this blog, the last day of the year is a good time to reminisce about the good and the bad and the not-so-bad. In looking over my calendar for this year, I am reminded of how busy it was with travel and scholarly projects.

Before December 2010 ended, I traveled to Annapolis, Maryland, to be with my family for a few days as they gathered, for the first time without my dad, who left us that year, to celebrate the New Year. That was in keeping with the tradition he instituted in 1999, when he thought the world might "end" due to the expected computer crash caused by the change to a new century -- the infamous Y2 scare that thankfully ended up being a dud.

In early January, I flew to Los Angeles, California, my first ever visit, to present a paper on Hawthorne at MLA, a presentation that yielded a query from a book editor about my work. In February, we traveled by car to a seminar on immigration at the University of Chicago, which was a disappointment, but the visit yielded an advance contract for my book manuscript from that editor. In March, my husband and I traveled to Puerto Rico for our usual spring break respite, and we got in the car again in early June to travel to Annapolis for my nephew's high school graduation and then to Richmond, Virginia, to visit a good friend. In August, I traveled to Puerto Rico to be with my mom for a medical procedure and then in early September we got in the car again on our way to Canada to the famous Stratford Shakespeare Festival to see Richard III played by a woman actor. In October, we took the car to Boston, where I celebrated my 50th birthday on the same day that the Storm of the Century hit most of New England.

I am grateful that 2011 was a good year, with a successful pre-tenure review completed in the spring, many scholarly projects undertaken -- one article written, revised and soon to be published, a chapter for an edited book collection accepted and sent by the editors to readers for comments, a proposal for an article on Approaches to Teaching Hawthorne accepted for a collection on such essays, the book manuscript started with one full chapter completed -- and two faculty development seminars attended. This was also the year in which I won two teaching awards, one of which serendipitously gave me a one-year leave to finish the book manuscript for which I got the contract in early spring.

Indeed, 2011 was quite generous to me. But because it was very challenging for most everyone else, on a national and personal level, especially for those I love dearly, I cannot celebrate 2011 as a great year and am glad to see it end. Hopefully, 2012 will be kinder, and gentler, and more generous to everyone.

After a year of so much traveling -- five road trips (counting Maryland and Virginia separately) and three airplane jaunts -- my husband and I are happy to stay home to welcome 2012. This will be, however, the first year the family isn't together to mark the end of one year and the beginning of another, as had been the tradition. Still, almost all the nephews and nieces got to spend time together with my mom and sister at my brother's house after Christmas, which might just be the start of a new tradition in itself.

In the personal arena, my main resolution for this coming year is to spend a lot less money on myself and do more for those who have so much less than I do. I pray 2012 is a prosperous and healthy year for everyone. ¡Feliz y Próspero Año Nuevo!

¡Nochebuena!

2011-12-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

Nochebuena, or the good night, has always had a special place in my heart and not because of the expectation of presents the next day.

Actually, I never did care much for Santa Claus given that I grew up on a tropical island where he represents the imposed traditions of a colonizing culture, which every day endangers the celebration of the much more lyrical Three Kings Day.

I have always preferred the legend of three wise men crossing the desert, who bring glorious presents to the poor newborn babe in a manger, to the overweight white man in a tacky red suit (with fur!) who simply feeds today's shocking commercialism.

For me, Nochebuena was always about the lit up tree not for Santa but to celebrate the birth of a Savior. While I am not particularly religious and way too much of an iconoclast to fit in any institutional church, the tradition of celebrating the eve of a new day where change for the better is possible seems lovely to me. I guess that's why I love Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" so much.

In that spirit, may you all have a lovely Nochebuena, full of love and joy and possibility. Hope you enjoy this powerful rendition of "O Holy Night" by Mariah Carey, which brings down the house, and brings me to tears of happiness.

The quilt is nearly done!

2011-12-17T22:09:00.000-05:00

This is what the quilt looks like with the border and you can see a little bit of the backing in the edges. When it's finished, the piping or binding (the outermost edge of the quilt) will be in the dark fabric edge that frames the blocks.

A new quilt for the New Year.

First snow

2011-12-17T15:59:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like a cardinal sitting on snow to give you a sense of the beauties (admittedly not very many) of winter, which doesn't actually arrive officially until Thursday but which is very much here already.

Today is our first snow of the season and it's falling light and quick out there, covering everything in a white blanket that feels like the shaved ice that the piragüeros in Puerto Rico use to make delicious piragüas or snow cones with flavored syrups.

In quilting class today I finished the front of the quilt and basted it to the back and I started quilting not "in the ditch" but just next to it. The actual quilting is the hardest part especially for straight-line challenged people like me who can't cut or sew straight. But I'll try to do my best so that the quilt is ready on Jan. 7, when we'll have our last class and put the binding on.

The semester ended yesterday so I expect the college grounds will be quiet when we go walk Lizzy. I am looking forward to being able to devote more uninterrupted time to piecing together my book manuscript now that the first half of the school year is finally over.

Yesterday I received the great news was that I won the competition for the best essay by junior faculty submitted to the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review competition. Papi would be thrilled. The win means a little bit of money (don't know how much) and will be announced at MLA, the major conference in our discipline. While I won't be there to receive the prize in person, I am going to enjoy this small success for a little while to come.

Return to quilting

2011-12-10T15:35:00.000-05:00

After a long hiatus in quilting due to illness in the quilting teacher's family (all is better now), the class met again today. While I was the farthest one behind, I ended up being the first one to finish the larger "face" of the wall-hanging and now will work on the borders before our next and final class a week from today. For someone as impatient and as short-tempered as I can be, quilting is almost a Zen activity because I force myself to be patient and not to expect perfection but to do the best I can. And that's enough. And that makes it fun.

The last two weeks have been busy with end-of-the-semester events and meetings with advisees but I have been able to make steady progress in getting my first chapter finished. One of my colleague friends has generously agreed to read it after Dec. 20 so I plan to have a full, edited version then and move on to the last chapter, which is pretty much done (these are both dissertation chapters that are being re-envisioned and, hopefully, much improved). The goal is to have two full chapters finished by the year's end so that I can focus on working on the two rougher chapters (one is about half drafted) and the last to be done (the third one) must be constructed from scratch.

I hope to be done with the book project by June 1, 2012 so I can devote the summer to planning classes and getting ready to return to teaching and to full-time work in the fall. I have agreed to teach the honor's seminar for my department and am very excited about the possibility since, although it will be in the fall semester of my tenure-review year and involves a new prep, many of the books I will teach are regulars on my syllabuses, including The Scarlet Letter and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

For this year, I am looking forward to the semester ending next week and then to the open days when I can devote myself to working on my project with little, if any, interruptions. Putting together a book manuscript isn't very different from quilting: you need commitment, discipline, an eye for detail, and lots of patience and faith that you can do it and finish what you started.

These holidays we'll be staying at home and I'm looking forward to having no more traveling until February, when we'll be going to Puerto Rico. I also am looking forward to a quiet time with my beloved husband and furry children (and perhaps visits from a College Daughter or two). Here's to 2011 ending on a good note for all of us!

Boston memories

2011-11-26T11:10:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, Oct. 26, my husband and I took off in the car on our way to Boston to celebrate my 50th birthday on the 29th and for me to do research at the Harvard Houghton Library, which holds many of Louisa May Alcott's manuscripts. We also stopped in Concord to see Orchard House, where Alcott lived for most of her life.

Unbeknown to us, the Storm of the Century would hit right on my birthday and dump a record amount of snow in New England and surrounding areas. For us, on the lucky side, that only meant that we didn't get Legal Seafoods for dinner, as we'd planned, and that a good friend, who lives in Massachusetts, couldn't make it to that dinner, and that the next day we didn't get to see our College Daughter who know teaches in western Massachusetts. And while the weather forced us to head back early Sunday morning to make sure we could get back here by that Monday afternoon, we didn't get buried in snow or had to suffer power outages or the other difficulties that many people woke to that Sunday morning.

Unlike Ohio, where the trees were already barren by then, New England was dressed in all its fall glory (before the storm) and it was a delight to see scene after scene of glorious colors (inspiration for a fall quilt next year?) even with the mounds of snow that had collected everywhere we drove by.

That round trip ended up being the fourth, and last!, of this year, in which I've traveled six times, counting two trips to Puerto Rico. We have sworn to ourselves that next year we'll be a lot more circumspect in our travel plans. But just being in Massachusetts makes me happy so I'm glad that we did this and that I had such a memorable 50th birthday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T21:48:00.000-05:00

We had nine people over for dinner tonight, counting the two of us. Our College Daughter and her mother, three students who stayed on campus, and a couple of friends. The table had to be expanded creatively but it didn't feel crowded and we had a lovely time.

The 19-pound turkey came out looking beautiful after nearly four hours of roasting and it tasted good though, in my book, it could have used more seasoning. Next year, I will season the turkey early in the morning the day before and let it stand overnight. This one I seasoned late in the afternoon yesterday and it didn't absorb as much of the garlic, olive oil and Herbs de Provence adobo as I'd wanted. In addition to tons of turkey, we also have enough stuffing and mashed potatoes to feed a small army. We could do a second Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow!

The apple and pumpkin pies (the first one made by me and the second store bought) are all gone, but I'm left with most of the sweet potato pie. I was the only one to eat that pie so it was not a winner tonight. Everything else was, though, so one strike isn't bad.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving Day. It's not a bad idea to count blessings and to feel very fortunate to be able to do so.

The quilt blocks (almost ) finished

2011-11-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

An inordinately busy October kept me from these pages for almost a month. First, my mom was here for cataract surgery for about three weeks of that month and, thankfully, all went well and she had a very nice visit.

Then, my husband and I drove to Boston for my 50th birthday. We took the opportunity to visit the Louisa May Alcott home (Orchard House) in Concord as part of my research for the book manuscript. I also worked at Harvard's Houghton Library and got to handle LMA's personal scrapbooks (her handwriting was almost illegible because of hand cramps!). There are many photos upcoming of that trip, which found us in Boston on the day that the Snow Storm of the Century hit.

Going on the fourth road trip of this year (my husband counted Chicago in February, Annapolis/Richmond in May, Canada in August and Boston in October, plus two airplane trips to Puerto Rico!) meant missing my quilting class on the day of my birthday so I was quite behind when I arrived early yesterday for a scheduled make-up class. But, as life will have it, the teacher's father had to have heart surgery in Columbus so she totally forgot (with reason) our appointment. After returning home late Friday night she had to go back yesterday because he had suffered some complications. I'm praying that he will be alright.

All was not lost in the class department, though, because the lady who arrived to volunteer to help at the shop is a consumate quilter and she was enthusiastic about helping me catch up. This meant that, although my "flying geese" have yet to be sewn together, I was able to make the "pinwheel" block and the special "applique" block for which the teachers left us a hastily hand-drawn pattern so some of my classmates are struggling with having it fit right over the square of the larger block below. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be a problem for me.

There is, of course, more to the quilt than these blocks (the blue background on the photo is only the carpet in one of our rooms where my husband took the photo) and still lots more work to be done (I think we'll run into three more classes and not just the two that we're supposed to have in December). But I'm very happy to be caught up with the rest of the class and ready to start the finishing touches for my third wall-hanging or table top quilt. There will be another full class starting in January and I am tempted to take it with an eye to getting to where I feel I've mastered the "beginning quilting" level. I guess that's the great thing about quilting, that you don't have to move grades until you're ready.

Meanwhile, I am working away at my book manuscript after a very busy start to the semester with advising and events I helped plan. I work best with deadlines so I've decided that I want to have at least two chapters fully finished by the end of this calendar year and the whole manuscript done by May so that I can only worry about class planning in the summer. I'm going to hold myself to that since the hardest thing about being on leave is that it's all up to me. Which is both good and bad.

Next up, photos of our trip to Boston and of the Storm of the Century. Stay tuned.

The "real" block

2011-10-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

Finished the "real" block for the quilted wall hanging. I got a little ambitious with the yellow squares and the block is still not really 12.5 inches square, as it should be, but the new machine is a dream to sew on.

My husband and I have decided to retire my abuela's old machine to the guest room, which has her antique bedroom furniture in it, so that it is near all the other things that were hers and are now with us.

Now it's on to "flying geese," which are even more a challenge than the triangles on this block. Thankfully, I have a lot of extra fabric from my mother in law so more practice blocks will come before the final one is done.

A great surprise!

2011-10-22T19:49:00.000-05:00

Today, when I arrived at my quilting class, I noticed that the large table where five of us (the students) work was all taken up with machines. My first thought was: "I don't have a space to work on..." And then the group started singing Happy Birthday and pointing me to the brand new machine with the pink polka dotted ribbons set on the space where I usually work.

Turns out my sneaky mom (who left yesterday after a three-week visit), and my sneaky husband had conspired so that she gifted me the machine for my upcoming 50th birthday and he went and bought it and conspired with my quilting teacher to have the surprise ready for me today.

Thanks to the fabulous machine, I was able to finish the practice block that I started yesterday and the "real" block with the fabric I bought, which will grace my quilted wall hanging when it's finished. Photos of that are upcoming.

I don't usually like surprises but I have to say that today's was among the best I've ever had in my life. I think what made this surprise particularly lovely was not the much-needed machine itself but more the lovely gesture from my mom, my brother and sister (who participated in the good wishes), my husband, my quilting teacher and even the relative strangers in the quilting class and in the store, all of whom were happy for me. It was a great surprise, indeed! It reminded me once more of how fortunate I am to have the life I have and such people to love and who love me.

Second practice block

2011-10-21T21:05:00.000-05:00

After a busy day of taking my mom to the airport early in the morning and then running errands before rushing back to campus for a lunch with faculty of color and students and then a meeting with a prospective student, I decided to spend part of this quiet night working on my quilting and doing a second practice block.

I still have a lot of leftover fabric that my mother-in-law gave me a long time ago, and I loved this print with the moon and the sun and the other print with the gold stars against a white background. And I liked the way the red print contrasted with both of them so I decided to work with these combinations. I am not displeased with the result but after sewing the rows together my old abuela's machine started giving me so much grief that I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

Tomorrow, hopefully, when I go to class, I'll get myself a new machine and this process will become a lot less frustrating and I'll be ready to get to the actual block with the more expensive fabric I bought for my quilted wall-hanging.

Practice doesn't always make perfect

2011-10-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

This is the practice block I worked on today because these triangles and the "butting of the seams" are both real challenges for me. Although I've done quilting before (twice!), I find that cutting, piecing and sewing are the types of endeavor where practice (at least not the little I've had) does not make perfect.

I'm going to try for a second practice block before I cut into my more expensive fabric, in the hope that the third time is the charm for these darned triangles and seams. (To give you an example of where I'm not up to snuff: while the entire block is supposed to measure 12.5 inches, mine is about 1/4 inch short all around and it's not an even square.)

Today I spent about 45 minutes in class trying to get my abuela's machine to behave and was so frustrated by the end that I decided I will invest on a new machine, which I hope to buy next week, before the next class. I will then retire my abuela's machine, which, after all, I did use to sew my first wall-hanging last year.

In the meantime, I worked some more tonight with scrap fabric my mother-in-law gave me a long time ago, which I put to good use for this practice session. There is more where that came from so the next practice block also will showcase some old scrap fabric of hers. I love having all that fabric to iron out my kinks, so to speak, before I cut into the nice fabric I bought for the new wall-hanging I'm working on.

While practice may not make perfect with quilting in my case, it'll at least should get me to "good enough."

Falling for Fall

2011-10-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

The first block is finished!

2011-10-08T20:25:00.000-05:00

New beginnings

2011-10-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

October is regaling us with glorious weather (in the high 70s and even low 80s!) and with cool, cool nights that are helping turn the trees (with the shorter daylight hours) into feasts for the eyes.

October, which also happens to be not just my favorite month but also the month in which I will celebrate half a century (oh, dear, how momentous that sounds!), is a great time to start quilting again. Today I had my third beginning quilting class (yes, I'm going back to the beginning rather than moving on to more demanding classes), and we began piecing together the first large bloc of our wall hanging. Last year, I made a fall-inspired quilt that now hangs on the wall of Papi's Room but this time around I'm going for my favored rose and pink prints.

I'm still using my abuela's old machine but am considering spending on a newer machine. I'm also considering sewing a wall hanging and a wrap from a glorious fabric a graduating senior from Indonesia gave me as a present. (I guess I've been watching too much Project Runway because I'm really disappointed that I didn't pay more attention at all those sewing classes my abuela put me through when I was a little girl. There's a fabric at the quilt shop that would make a fabulous jacket, if only I knew how to make one!!)

I really love piecing and sewing. It's such a different brain activity than everything else I'm involved in, like reading and writing (mostly), or thinking through other people's (mostly students') problems and challenges. I'm really looking forward to working on this project and to be more purposeful and careful about it. Perhaps then I might feel like I'm ready to move on to intermediate. Perhaps.

Dusk

2011-10-01T07:49:00.000-05:00

Fall is my favorite time of the year, although this one has started a few weeks before it was supposed to, so that today, the first of October, it's already in the 40s out there. Brrrr.

Last night, I gave Lizzy a quick walk outside just at the time after the sun had set but there was still a little illumination to give me this view of a quarter moon and the advancing darkness.

I'm always grateful, at dusk, my favorite time of the day, that there are no actual vampires to ruin such views.

Charm

2011-09-24T21:06:00.000-05:00

Today, my husband and I embarked on what might end up being our last motorcycle ride of the year and we had a lovely time visiting the tiny town of Charm, Ohio.

Squarely in Amish country, but not a tourist trap, the town boasts a great "Amish-style" restaurant called Grandma's Homestead. My husband had eaten there a decade ago and has been talking about it ever since, so I'm glad we finally made it there. All good things come to those who wait, they say.

I had the pan-fried chicken with mashed potatoes, which was very good, and my husband had a veggie burger, which didn't disappoint him. Then it was on to pumpkin pie for me (the first of the now-official fall season) and he had cherry pie, which he was kind enough to say wasn't as good as the one I make. Of course, the one I prepare enjoys the advantage of a pricey cherry pie filling courtesy of Williams-Sonoma, which is unbeatable. (I did try to pit my own cherries once. The feat will never be repeated. I'd rather pay for the pricey filling...)

While my hubby went off to take pictures, I visited a nearby cheese factory and secured some famous baby Swiss for him and Amish Butter Cheese for me (it's as delicious as it sounds). Then we embarked on our return trip and decided to stop at a place where we'd seen a sign promising the "Longest Covered Bridge in Ohio."

We were not disappointed.

The aptly named "Bridge of Dreams" is felicitously located in a bucolic site, which provided the perfect setting for the end of our first fall 2011 bike adventure (well, to the extent that I do adventures on a bike). This was a lovely day, well spent with my favorite person in the whole world even after more than 17 years of marriage. It never ceases to amaze me how, despite how difficult and stubborn we can each be, we are still such good company to each other the vast majority of the time. I can think of no greater blessing in my life.

Studies in sunlight

2011-09-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

There are times of the year when the light changes. My favorite change occurs in the fall when the sun becomes more ocher at sunset.

Today, as the sun set, we could espy it playing with the shadows in our bedroom and lighting a few trees and objects with its fading golden light, like the spinning blue flower my mother-in-law recently gave us.

My husband, with a much better camera than mine, was able to do justice to these "studies in sunlight."

Lovely.

A decade later...

2011-09-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

All through my childhood, I remember people around me mentioning how they would never forget where they were, and what they were doing, the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I always wondered how a historical event could cause so many people, even in different parts of the world, to feel like they were a part of that event.

9/11 was just such a date for many of us.

Ten years ago today, I was getting ready to go to school, to a modernism class I was taking as a non-degree student at a nearby university. That fall, I was taking advantage of their community service program, which allowed me to register and take a class for a minimal fee. Though I was about as old as the professor, whose name, Desmond Hamlet, couldn't have been more literary, I was perhaps the most eager student in that class.

But not that day.

Confused and horrified, like everyone else, I had watched the TV morning news at home, as I was long used to do each morning (that's how I saw, more than a decade earlier, Challenger disappear in a puff of smoke on screen), and had listened to the car radio all the way from our home to the university. I went to class, uncertain of what was going on (it would be a long while before we knew it had been a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers), uncertain of how we could possibly hold class on a day like that. I had no cellphone so I had no way to call my husband at work and ask for his thoughts and to give and seek comfort.

As I walked into the classroom, I saw that the other students, so much younger than I and wholly inexperienced in this kind of horror, were quite agitated and had very little access to news and information. This was way before the time of PDAs and laptops so we were all equally lost.

Then Prof. Hamlet walked in and said, in his deep, resonant voice and British accent, and very calmly: "Though we are still unclear of the reasons behind what has happened today, it is undoubtedly a most horrifying event. For the next hour, let's seek refuge in the world created by William Faulkner (we were studying The Sound and the Fury). Later, there will be plenty of time to deal with what has happened this morning. For now, let's immerse ourselves in literature."

And so we did. Now that I am a professor I will never forget Professor Hamlet's aplomb and his ability to calm us down and make us focus on the task at hand, that of making sense of Faulkner's confusing masterpiece, a blessed respite from the reality that was unfolding beyond our classroom, a reality more incomprehensible and unfathomable than anything fiction could have imagined.

A tiny bit of Canada

2011-09-05T21:25:00.000-05:00

Over this Labor Day weekend, my husband and I drove a total 809 miles to Niagara Falls, in Canada, then to Niagara on the Lake, and, finally, to Stratford, Ontario, and then back. Our final destination was to see Richard III at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, which had come highly recommended by friends and colleagues at my small college on the hill.

Our first stop was Niagara Falls, which neither of us had ever seen, and the falls themselves proved to be as glorious and majestic as we imagined.

In Niagara Falls, we stayed at the Villa Alexandrea Bed and Breakfast, which I found was well recommended on Trip Advisor. While our "French Room," was spotless and the most economical at $129.95 a night (with a lovely breakfast included), it was less comfortable or nice than our own room here at home, something that greatly lessens the enjoyment of sleeping somewhere other than on your own bed.

But what was perhaps the greatest culture shock (in addition to the sticker shock of prices, which included paying $6.27 for a Starbucks I regularly pay $3.90 for!) was the Las Vegas-crossed-with-L.A. feel to the Clifton Hill area of Niagara Falls where we were hard pressed to find a "normal" place to eat.

There was the Jurassic Park-themed mini golf, and the Frankenstein-themed Burger King, or a haunted house (the gargoyle below is from "Dracula's Castle") or wax museum in every corner with blaring advertisements and videos.

Most disappointing was our dinner at Mamma Mia's Original Italian, which was basically a culinary highway robbery. For $40, we each had one glass of wine ($8 a glass!) and I had a $14 plate that was advertised as "spaghetti and meatballs" on the menu but which came with only ONE meatball. And it was a very sad meatball at that. The spaghetti was so overcooked it seemed like they had boiled it for about 20 minutes. My husband was sorry that he didn't take a picture of the lone meatball for posterity.

Things improved that Saturday when we drove out of Niagara Falls and visited Niagara on the Lake (where we got a $25-dollar ticket for failing to display a parking pass that we had trouble obtaining because the parking meters would not accept U.S. credit cards!), and then continued on to Stratford, where we stayed at the Caversham House. This B&B, while significantly pricier than the one in Niagara Falls, turned out to save the weekend. Our room, the Sheridan, was small but lovely and we spent a few hours hanging out on the nice porch where we learned a lot about the festival and about Canada from the very friendly inn-keepers.

That night we had dinner at the Keystone Alley Café where my husband had a $24.50 "vegetable stew," which he actually enjoyed. The meal was nice and we got to taste great Canada wines, and while it was more expensive that we would've liked, we certainly didn't leave feeling cheated. On the walk back, I visited a store of indigenous art and bought a beautiful carving of a howling wolf and a gorgeous scarf depicting a native story of "the Raven stealing the light."

Both Saturday and Sunday we had a nice time walking around the area near the B&B, especially since there is a lake with a trail around it, which we walked in its entirety on Sunday morning after having a hearty breakfast of waffles with ginger sauce and roasted pineapples and home-made granola. We enjoyed watching the black squirrels, the hundreds of ducks around the lake and the tiny seagulls.

Sunday afternoon we saw Richard III (which had given us our initial wallet jolt at $250 for two tickets) and it was decidedly the highlight of the trip for me (my husband not being much of a Shakespeare fan). The actor who played "Dickie III," as the innkeepers endearingly referred to the play, did a fantastic job and the direction and staging were superb. We decided that while most of the trip hadn't gone as we'd imagined, we may return to the festival some other time but drive directly to Stratford.

Unfortunately, while we drove for long stretches on the Queen Elizabeth Way, we only got to see a tiny bit of Canada. I have been to Montreal and Quebec, but never to Ontario and was sorry to only get to see so little of what is a huge expanse of beautiful country on the map.

While we both would like to see much more of Canada, we've also started looking for other Shakespeare festivals closer to home, which may (we hope) represent a significantly lesser expense.

Scenes around our house

2011-08-30T20:23:00.001-05:00

The miramelindas, or impatiens, as they're called here, really like this area of the yard and have been bursting with their pinks and reds and orange colors.

Darwin and Hamlet spend a lot of the time outside nowadays and have decided to share, nicely, the space.

Hamlet, with a cara de pocos amigos, likes to spend time on top of the gate, which he has no trouble climbing and getting down from. You can tell he is the youngest of the cats.

Magellan loves to be outside and my husband often has to go outside to find her in her hiding places.

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."

2011-08-20T20:35:00.000-05:00

Beloved Summer, you whose presence is so fleeting, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways!

Now that we're in Deep Summer, or basically only a few days short of a month until fall officially beings on Sept. 23rd, there is an urgency in the air as if every living thing was trying to make the most of what remains of the long, warm days.

For us, it's been a good summer, thankfully. There's been many caprese salads to prepare with fresh tomatoes from the farmer's market, fresh basil from my glorious plant in my small huerto and Ohio-made mozzarella cheese.

There's also been lots of sweet corn -- I prepared a corn soup a few weeks' back that was one of the best recipes I've prepared yet, and weekly trips to the farmer's market where the produce has been plentiful and delicious.

There's also been several trips to our favorite nearby orchard for fresh peaches, which have made for several each-one-better-than-the-next peach galettes, and one visit to the pool at my parents-in-law's compound, where my husband spent some quality time on a inflatable chair.

We also visited the tombs of Rusty and Geni, our beloved and gone Puerto Rican satos, who loved "the hill" as the place where my husband grew up is affectionately known.

There was also a quick visit to Puerto Rico to accompany my mami to some medical tests, which also thankfully, came out negative.

While there, we looked through old recipes and cooking books and came across a "menu list" my mom typed up, we don't know when, of the dinners she would cook over a month's time.

We also found a small hand-written booklet my abuela prepared for my mom, when she had just married my father, for easy recipes that he liked. The booklet, in my abuela's painstakingly clear script, is adorable and very valuable as a memento of her personality and style. All the recipes, for some reason, are egg dishes.

Today, the first years arrived on campus for their week-long Orientation and classes begin next Thursday. I am, thanks to a teaching fellowship award, not teaching this year, so I am thankfully spared the last-minute jitters and stress that each semester brings. I am, however, advising three first years this year, as part of my work with a summer retention program, so I will be meeting with them and their parents tomorrow.

Also today I returned to the quilting shop where I took classes last year, and paid in full for the American Beauty quilt set that I put a deposit on almost a year ago. I hope to start another beginning class in September and get started on the first me-made quilt for our bed, to be completed (hopefully) before I go back to the classroom next year.

Summer goes so quickly. I know I will miss it terribly once the days begin to get colder. But, for now, I'm not thinking about that. Instead, I plan to make the absolute most of every one of the next 34 days.

Dog days

2011-08-01T12:40:00.001-05:00

The dog days of August began in July when we had almost two solid weeks (or maybe even more) of temperatures above the 90s. My husband and I, who aren't fans of having the AC on, have had to cave in and keep it on even though we set it at 77 degrees.

Lizzy, for her part, has been trying to claim the cat bed that is really Chiquita's bed and not doing very well at it, while Darwin, who has been spending a lot of time in our bedroom since we had our ugly carpets torn off and had a wood laminate floor installed, likes the idea of hanging from my open drawer.

My husband and I are trying to make the most out of this summer and going out on the motorcycle to explore the surrounding sights, and this weekend we went to Landoll's Mohican Castle for lunch. It wasn't much of a castle, at least not as we imagined, but the food was good and the ride through some beautiful country, so we didn't complain.

I've also vowed that I will make it to the Farmer's Market every Saturday through October, barring travel and any other unforeseen interruptions. More so now after I've watched Food, Inc., the documentary about the agricultural industry in this country, which has made me vow NEVER to eat again a mass produced piece of meat or eggs or vegetable, if I can possibly avoid it. I've also requested Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit from the library so I can learn more about what we eat when we buy produce in supermarkets.

Two years ago, I listened to an audiobook of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and it changed my understanding of what it means to be a consumer of mass-produced food in this country and made me embark on a more purposeful effort to become a locavore. One of the real perks of living in Ohio is the bounty of farm fresh produce that we can get, and the Amish baked goods (including ready made pie crusts!).

Continuing to educate myself more about and improve on what we eat in our household is one of my priorities this summer. Especially now that I've met the two main work-related deadlines I had for June and July, turning in a chapter for an edited collection and revising an article that will be published in a journal. Now it's on to the book manuscript, while we also try to eat better and do some more sightseeing in Ohio.

As my papi might say: Sigue pa'lante y pa'trás ni pa' coger impulso.

Glorious summer

2011-07-18T08:25:00.000-05:00

The glory of summer, announced by the cacophony of the cicadas, is marked in earnest by the arrival of peach season. This year, the season was delayed at least one week because of an inordinately cool and wet spring but farmers are hoping that this means the season for all late-summer fruits and vegetables will be extended well into September. Here's to hoping!

At our favorite nearby orchard, peach season began on July 15 so my husband and I hopped on the motorcycle and rode over to load up on the first apples of the season, called Lodi apples, and on the first peaches, Early Red Haven.

There is something downright poetical about getting a peach so ripe and fresh that it still has the leaves of the tree attached to it. Since I was a child, I have loved peaches when we could find them in the supermarket in Puerto Rico. But I had no idea that the sad, mangled fruits you get there have little in common with the glorious peaches you get when you live only a few miles away from the orchard. (Of course, because we live here and not there we can't enjoy the wonderful quenepas of late summer there so there's always a trade off.)

The upcoming harvest of apples, which will be a bittersweet sign that we'll be moving into fall, also looks quite promising.

Also in preparation for fall and winter, farmers are already collecting the hay to form it into the bales that will feed livestock when there is nothing else on the ground from them to munch on. These bales are the ones kept outdoors in comparison to the square ones that are usually kept inside barns.

Luckily for us, as we were riding down a country road, we came upon a farmer baling the hay into square bales that will be kept in the barn. While my little digital camera could not take the picture fast enough to catch the bale in the air you can still see the the most recently made bale falling on top of the others in the wagon behind the tractor.

Another promise of the glory of summer is the early corn that is now ready to be picked after a much-delayed growing season. I look forward to buying some fresh corn ears at the market this Saturday and then making corn bisque or a corn mush (I can't eat the actual corn kernels) so we can enjoy another wonderful perk of living in farm country during harvest season.

Sights unseen

2011-07-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

For years now, we've been driving by this dilapidated old schoolhouse, which must have been built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and I've always wanted to stop and take a picture. But that wish didn't come through until yesterday, when my husband and I set off on the motorcycle for a late afternoon photographic excursion.

I would have wanted to walk inside but there was no cleared path available and my husband most strenuously insisted that this would be a bad idea. "What if the thing collapses while you're inside?" It's stood for a long time, I reasoned, so that would be unlikely. An intense dislike of ticks dissuaded me more persuasively that it would be unwise to brave the very tall grass to get a peek inside.

There is something so sad about remnants of the past that are allowed to collapse on themselves. If it was, indeed, a one-room schoolhouse, as the tiny bell tower at the top suggests, according to my husband, wouldn't the people who were taught there want to preserve it? Wouldn't the county want to make a small museum out of it? There is an old schoolhouse replica at the fair grounds every year so why not maintain the real thing? And, if unwanted, why not tear it down rather than allow it to decay, unused and uncared for, in front of everyone's eyes? These are questions without answers, I know.

On a happier note, a turn down an unknown road revealed a pretty covered bridge, one of the many that make this region famous, poised over a creek. We stopped to take pictures and to rest before heading back home after our short adventure.

For me, summer is just beginning, although chronologically it may be nearly halfway done. The intensive three-week session I taught again this year ended July 1st, my husband and I marked my father's anniversary on July 2nd, my sister-in-law, her husband and kids visited with us from July 2-4, and on that Tuesday, July 5th, my husband and I turned 17. It's funny that it doesn't feel that long at all, which I guess is a very good thing. He still takes my breath away, that is how handsome he is!

On my desktop, I have still a few papers to grade for the summer program and I have an article to revise by Aug. 1 and I'm beginning to work on my book project as well, already planning a trip to Houghton Library at Harvard next month. All of it manageable, none of it a rush, like the pace of my life during the school year.

The best thing of it all is summer, with its clear blue skies and its yellow heat and even its sweaty humidity and pop-up storms and the concert of cicadas every morning, which announces another scorcher to come. Summertime is precious time, and I hope to mark every single day of this first relatively free summer. It has been long in coming though I know it will be quick in passing.

Anniversary

2011-07-02T21:35:00.000-05:00

Usually, anniversaries are happy times of celebration. But today marks a year since my beloved papi left us to go, as he liked to say, al otro lado de las cosas.

It's been a year filled with dates when not having him hit home hard, like on my birthday in October or on his birthday in February or on Father's Day just last month.

Today, my husband and I walked the dogs to the commemorative bench mami and us had built for him and we placed a little flower offering I bought at the farmer's market this morning.

Papito, wherever you are, you must know how much we all miss you and how, while the grief is perhaps a little less intense a year later, your absence is no less keenly felt.

Summer's feel

2011-06-08T21:02:00.000-05:00

Today, my first College Daughter, who graduated two years ago and is here for part of the summer, called that she had a "mystery trip" planned to show me something she refused to describe. I am not a fan of surprises and find mysteries annoying, as I promptly told her, but the trip was well worth it. Turns out there is a waterfall with a nice series of cool-water pools near here, which is a good thing to know if my brother or sister and their kids come to visit me this summer.

On the way back, we saw an Amish mother and son selling huge quarts of fresh strawberries on the side of the road. I couldn't believe it when the Amish woman said the strawberries were $2 a quart! So we bought six quarts and I kept three so that promptly, upon returning home, I could make my first open-faced strawberry pie, with an Amish ready-made crust that I bought at the Farmer's Market a few weeks' back and had frozen.

After returning from our road trip this week, I've been attending a faculty seminar on law and society, which ends Friday, and then on Monday I begin a three-week intensive program for underrepresented students at my small college on the hill. That will keep me busy until July 1, when my one-year leave officially begins (can't wait!).

Road trip

2011-06-06T20:20:00.066-05:00

Over the weekend, my husband and I drove about 1,094 miles from Ohio to Annapolis to Virginia and back. We arrived in Maryland on Friday to attend my godson's high school graduation on Saturday, and it was bittersweet to see that happy little boy turned into an 18-year-old young man on his way to college later this fall. While in Annapolis, we stayed in a very nice bed and breakfast, Meadow Gardens, where we had a nice French Country room and where the breakfasts were superb.

On Sunday, we drove to Virginia to visit a very good friend and we stayed in her lovely home and met her furry son, Owen, who my husband caught waiting for him with his bone in mouth at one point. The large stick at the side of the entrance is one of his most favorite toys. Our stay with Owen and her mommy was very relaxing and sweet, and then on Monday we departed early because we had a long trip ahead to return home.

Since Monticello was on the way, my husband humored me (as he is wont to do, bless his soul) so we made a stop in the famous 18th century home of Thomas Jefferson and took the house tour and the euphemistically titled "Plantation Community" tour.

While the house is breathtaking, especially considering when and how it was built, the shadow of slavery looms large over everything there. I winced each time the tour guide referred to the slaves as "enslaved workers." We actually didn't hear the word "slave" until we took the "Plantation Community" tour, which was even more problematic. For one, the tour guide suggested that there was no way of knowing "100% sure" that Jefferson fathered the children that Sally Hemings had.

There is little left of the slave quarters at Monticello, but this photo gives the sense of what at least some of the slaves who lived near the palatial home would have seen from what were basically shanties. "All men are created equal" takes on a very different sense when you see Monticello and when you read Jefferson's musings about African-descended peoples.

The most heartbreaking part of the trip, however, was the slave cemetery, where about 40 slaves are buried, including up to 20 children, whose identities are not known. There were about 400 slaves who lived and worked in Monticello from 1774 to 1826 when Monticello and everything in it, including most of the slaves, had to be sold to pay for Jefferson's nearly $100,000 debt after his death.

The cemetery, at the bottom of the mountain on which Monticello stands, has no headstones. All the slaves had were rocks to mark the burials. It is a place to weep for the anonymous forgotten and to recall Toni Morrison's words in Beloved: "Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name?"

Monticello reminds us of how so much wealth (there and in this country) was built on the backs of people who got no glory for it.

Wild life

2011-05-26T20:05:00.000-05:00

With the semester finally and blessedly over, life has a different pace and hue around here, helped by sunnier and warmer days even though this has been a very wet May, fast on the heels of the wettest April on record in Ohio.

Today, for the first time, we caught a glimpse of our resident snake (should we name her Eve?), which is singly responsible for why several ranitas that have hopped all the way to our water feature to claim it as their own have not-so-mysteriously disappeared after our dear Mr. Frog died two winters ago.

Earlier this week, my husband caught this wild turkey strolling at the edge of our property, right at the entrance of our driveway, as she crossed toward the woods where her huge flock (of maybe 20-30 wild turkeys) live and where they routinely walk up and down these hills.

The wildlife around us is out in full force now that we're in late spring, which actually feels like early summer (we did skip the real spring this year), and that feeling of "I'm finally on break!" is slowly starting to sink in. That's why today I got a much-needed upper back massage, something I haven't done in a gazillion years, and my boricua friend and I went to have dinner at a favorite Indian restaurant, lo que nunca, which we are never able to do during the crazy busy semester.

I also spent a few hours in my office today readying my scholarly plan for summer: one proposed book chapter that needs to be done by late June and an accepted journal article that needs to be ready by late July, and then it's on to my book project.

Gathering my research together and starting to make notes on what I want to argue in that chapter is exciting and reminds me (after reading thousands of pages of student writing) how much pleasure there is in the creative art of academic writing. Although some students have actually told me that they think the words "creative" and "academic" are opposites, nothing is farthest from the truth. I thrive on the creative process of working to distinguish my interpretation of a particular text from existing scholarship and of attempting to contribute to a larger scholarly conversation about and understanding of an issue or a work, and I can't be more pleased that this kind of creative work will be the focus of the rest of this year and the beginning of 2012.

The pre-tenure review process went well so I have been re-appointed at my small college on the hill, I have a one-year research leave to write a book for which I have an advance contract, and I also received the junior faculty teaching award this year. As I've said before, I'm sure my beloved papito has had something to do with all this good fortune and that he is also basking in all the good that has come our way. He would be the first to remind me of all the reasons I have to be grateful -- Dios te vino a ver, he would say -- and to feel so incredibly blessed that I have all these opportunities and privileges.

Finally!

2011-05-13T21:38:00.000-05:00

Warmer temperatures finally arrived and, after Mother's Day, we are (supposedly) past the danger of frost so I've brought some of my plants back from the office and placed them on the deck, hoping that they'll remember their former glory.

Chiquita, the Chihuahua, is loving the sun and the heat, and all she's missing is a pair of Wayfarers and a pink bikini to be quite in her element.

The first Farmer's Market of the year was last Saturday and I bought fresh rhubarb from an Amish farmer (who always has the best vegetables) and made my first fresh rhubarb pie of the season.

In the backyard, the trees have exploded in green and the flowers are in full bloom, including my favorite late spring bloomer, the bleeding hearts.

This wondrous bush is also in full bloom and I don't remember seeing it last summer, or even the summer before, so perhaps the alternatively wet and warm conditions have helped it burst into show.

It's interesting that this backyard has so many purple flowers since the color of my small college on the hill is purple and while I'm not sure of what the first two plants are, the last one, a lilac tree, is also in fullest bloom and the perfume that it emits is simply glorious.

Even the hostas look like they're unfurling into giants.

Of course, the advent of late spring always brings with it the concomitant bugs, which don't add anything positive in my book (although I do understand their biological purpose) so there's lots of checking of the dogs and cats for ticks and lots of evicting all kinds of flying and other critters that want to invade our home.

At school, classes are finally over and the semester officially ended today. I am buried in grading (have about 200 pieces of student writing, of varying lengths, to grade between now and May 24), which doesn't contribute to being in good humor, especially since I swore to myself that I wasn't going to do this to myself again. But I'm trying to take it in stride and work relentlessly to get it all done well and on time, especially given that I am on leave next year so I won't have to worry about having déjà vu all over again.

Long time, no see!

2011-04-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

Protracted absences from this space usually mean that I've had the kind of week (or weeks) when even sitting in front of the blog to describe anything about them is basically impossible. Either I really don't have a single minute to sit and reflect, or I'm too exhausted to do so.

It's taken me a while to figure it out, but I've finally realized why many colleagues prefer to teach their two-course semester in spring. For the past five years, however, I've taught three courses each spring, a streak I hope will end the next time I return to the classroom in 2012-13. The spring is much harder because, on top of having three classes and 55 students (a few less than I had in spring 2009, which was 62, and significantly less than some of my friends who have 75 students in intro classes for other departments), there are senior projects to read, comment on and grade, in addition to honors theses to read and honors defenses to attend. There's also campus visits by candidates for different positions, reviews for other colleagues, recommendation letters to write for graduating seniors, and so on.

I guess the good thing, if there is such, is that this spring has been so wet and cold and gray that at least I haven't felt worse that I'm so uber-busy when the nice weather has started and I want to enjoy the long afternoons before night falls. Hopefully, the nice weather will be here by the time the semester ends in May and then all is well that ends well.

One really cool thing I did do this semester (as if I needed any more!) was a staged reading in Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes' El retablo de las maravillas. Last year, a Spanish professor and I got the idea to get money from the community events fund at our small college on the hill and we staged a bilingual dramatic reading of Fuenteovejuna, which was a lot of fun but sparsely attended. This year, we put on Cervantes and we had a nearly packed house, so to speak. I gave the introduction in English and then the student "actors" read and acted their parts in Spanish, with different levels of proficiency. That went from a native speaker from Mexico, who had one of the main parts, to first-year students taking 100-level Spanish, who had secondary roles. I had a ball and while it took chunks of my time that could have been devoted to other pressing tasks, I enjoyed every minute of it and it was the highlight of my week.

There was also a lot of fun in collaborating with the Spanish professor and with a newly hired professor of Drama, who directed the play, and did a terrific job. So much so, that while we never did get a chance to have one rehearsal where we ran the play from beginning to end, the director had framed the scenes so well that, on the performance day, everything went on almost without a hitch even though he couldn't be there. Ironically, given what I said before about the added pressures of spring on everyone, he had a meeting of his department to go over senior comps and couldn't make it. We've now decided that we'll try again for something else to stage next year and even though I will be on leave thanks to a one-year fellowship I received, I most certainly will participate. Not only do these efforts diversify the drama offerings available to students at my small college on the hill but watching those students, most of them second-language speakers of Spanish, read and act in their second language was inspiring.

In the home front, my husband is simply biding time until my semester is over and I become human again and am actually able to get home and enjoy being home instead of spending about 15 minutes with him and then running upstairs to my office to grade, or plan classes, or write letters, or answer e-mails, or a combination of all those and more.

One member of our household whose life has changed even before the weather finally improves is Darwin. For reasons unknown, except that male cats who mark territory after being neutered tend to do so out of anxiety, Darwin likes to pee on the walls. While I've heard of other people who either medicate their cats with Prozac to zonk them out or put the cats down because of this negative behavior, I'm not going to consider either one of those options. I'd rather just clean up after him each and every day.

However, I heard of someone in the college who had a cat doing that and then started letting the cat outside and the cat stopped marking inside the house. Thus, we're letting Darwin out now for stretches of time and he seems to like it. I haven't noticed as much marking recently so, perhaps, we've found the perfect cure. We'll have to see.

The only thing that worries me is that he may want to imitate Hamlet (see him on top of the fence) and start running to the front of the house, where the issue of a road and the cars makes an rookie outdoor-indoor cat's presence tricky. We may also have to get Darwin his own collar with a bell to help the birds, mice, etc., escape before he's upon them. We'll have to see how this experiment goes.

Believe

2011-04-06T20:37:00.000-05:00

Like a miracle, today's sun finally coaxed the reluctant daffodils in our backyard to open and to look toward it with hope.

Also with hope, the white dogwood is sprouting little green "hands" all over the ends of its spindly branches, which look ready to unfold and stretch.

That is one of my favorite things about spring: that it does spring, inevitable.

April showers

2011-04-03T10:28:00.003-05:00

March started with the much-longed-for Spring Break and ended in a mad rush that has not yet abated. While I do appreciate the two-week break, especially because it gives us the opportunity to have a leisurely visit in Puerto Rico, the crazy-busy-ness of the last two weeks and that of nearly all of April make the break feel like a hazy dream. But perhaps the idea is that the break fuels us with the energy to make it to the end of the academic year in about five weeks' time. Perhaps.

Thankfully, I have managed to stay above water so far, which is an achievement given my previous track record at my small college on the hill, and clearly points to lessons learned. I also have received encouraging news, such as positive, if unofficial, feedback on the pre-tenure review, a full-year research leave for 2011-12 awarded on the basis of teaching evaluations and student letters, and the acceptance for publication of an article I submitted to a specialized journal. The feedback on teaching, especially, has been most appreciated and helpful in fully restoring my self-confidence, which suffered some last spring because the personal difficulties I was facing with my father's illness coincided with a small group of disgruntled students and created a perfect storm of near-despair. But those days are now only a sad memory and there is nothing like the positive reinforcement of colleagues to restore self-faith and perspective.

Also in very good news, my father's bench on the nearby trails has been installed and the photo above gives you an idea of the view (albeit the winter one) that the resting spot affords to the winded hiker (it's atop a small hill). Soon, there will be plaque on the bench with my father's name and he will be memorialized near the home where he spent his last months of life and at the place that he had come to love so dearly.

The photo of Chiquita below I'm including only because it's so cute and because it shows her doing her favorite thing: snuggling up to me and taking a nap. Because this semester has been manageable and I have not been as severely exhausted as last year, I haven't needed to take life-preserving naps at 8 p.m. every night just so I could get a second wind to finish working until midnight. I've been going to bed at a regular time and getting a good night's sleep so naps have not been necessary. Thus, Chiquita doesn't get the chance to do this very often.

The fact that this semester has been manageable also manifests itself in the fact that I was able to make a batch of aromatic sofrito for all the upcoming bean concoctions that will grace our dining table in the future.

When I prepare this (a "base" for cooking traditionally used in Puerto Rico), I always remember my maternal grandmother, who was famous for her sofrito. In looking ahead to other batches of sofrito, and because from my paternal grandmother, my abuela, I may have inherited a green thumb, today I ordered four sets of seeds for different kinds of cherry tomatoes and for Costa Rican sweet peppers. I remember the plants of ají dulces and recao that my abuela had in her backyard and am going to try to get some seeds next time I'm in Puerto Rico to bring and plant here even if I have to keep them as inside plants over the winter.

April is only a few days old today but it's started with very rainy weather, which I keep repeating to myself means that May flowers will come. Still, there is a chance of snow flurries tonight and severe storms tomorrow, which reminds me that I'm in Ohio where the weather is, as Toni Morrison so aptly said, "theatrical."

Crow Moon

2011-03-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight, for the first time in 19 years, the moon is at its fullest and its closest to the Earth. We couldn't miss the show, so my husband and I "saddled up" Lizzy (basically put her halter and leash on) and I placed Chiquita inside my jacket and off we went to the nearby trails to await the moon rise, which was scheduled for 8:05 p.m.

However, because we live in hill country, the moon didn't actually rise over our hills until about 8:45 p.m. and Chiquita got quite antsy given that she's not used to being out in the pitch darkness on a cold night. Lizzy, white against the dark shadows of the trail, veritably glowed, as if she was phosphorescent.

The moon was worth the wait. It rose, pale faced and serene, over the blackened sky, glowing like white fire. If let loose, the she-wolf in my soul would have howled.

Mi isla

2011-03-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

Caribbean blue

2011-03-12T12:52:00.000-05:00

We arrived in Puerto Rico last week, taking advantage of the long spring break at my small college on the hill, and leaving behind the dreary winter weather that has run clear almost into mid-March up in Ohio. When we got to my mom's apartment, weary and hungry after two flights (it's more complicated to get to Puerto Rico from Ohio than to Europe!), my mami prepared her yummy serenata, a native dish of boiled viandas, which is accompanied by the most gorgeous and delicious aguacates you will ever find. Those scrawny, sad avocados we get up in Ohio are but a shadow to the ones that grow freely and lustily on this island.

Our first morning here we promptly made it in to a nearby Starbucks, where (as I mention each time we're here) not only does the coffee taste even better than in any other such one stateside, but where they actually know how to spell my name without my having to spell it out for them. In Ohio, I've opted for just giving my last name rather than having to go through the trouble of spelling my first name, which gets mangled and mispronounced/misspelled variably as WHYVONNA, WHYVONNEY, WHYVONNIE, EVON, EVONNEY, and so on.

It happens so often in Ohio that I'm repeatedly reminded of the Martín Espada poem:

Revolutionary Spanish Lesson

Whenever my name
is mispronounced,
I want to buy a toy pistol,
put on dark sunglasses,
push my beret to an angle,
comb my beard to a point,
hijack a busload
of Republican tourists from Wisconsin,
force them to chant anti-American slogans
in Spanish,
and wait for the bilingual SWAT team
to helicopter overhead,
begging me to be reasonable

This is the view from my mom's balcony and the pristine Caribbean blue sky never ceases to amaze and delight me. Yesterday, we went searching for another kind of blue, the Atlantic, and drove all the way to Luquillo, on the east end of the island. To get there, we drove on the road by the beach and feasted on the azure ocean views and the greenery, which often canopied the road in a green glory.

We made one stop before Luquillo to take pictures and then continued on to our destination, where we hoped to scout out a possible place to spend a few weeks here in January 2012 since I will be on a research leave for the next academic year. The thought of spending the worst of the Ohio winter here, or at least part of that worst time, is very appealing for us, especially if we can do so in a nice place where I could work on my book and my husband could do his freelance work overlooking the Atlantic, especially at a time when we don't have to worry about hurricanes.

The natural beauties of my patria are breathtaking, and the hard work and loveliness of most of the Puerto Ricans who live and toil here, is amazing. Corretjer said it best: Yo sería borincano aunque naciera en la luna.

Chicagoland

2011-02-26T17:03:00.083-05:00

This dismal February ended with a trip to Chicago for a four-day faculty seminar sponsored by the University of Chicago, and while I didn't enjoy much about the seminar itself, for several reasons, and the hotel where we stayed was quite dismal (we had to be moved from one room to another because of a non-working heater), I got great news over there and having my husband's company made the trip special, as usual.

Chicago is, of course, a lovely city, especially at night, when it lights up like jewel, and while we didn't particularly care for the lake wind that chilled our bones when we took walks outside, it was wonderful to be so near the water. As a caribeña, I love to see the waves and the lake is big enough to pass for a sea, for someone unfamiliar with the geography of the place. I think that's one of the reasons, apart from all the emotional ones, that I so love Boston. Even when I just land at Logan after flying over the coast, there's a tugging at my heart that only also happens when I land in Puerto Rico.

Once the second seminar session ended on Friday afternoon, my husband and I decided to drive into the city and visit the famous Water Tower Place mall, which is worth the visit (I only bought "authentic" Cubs T-shirts for my sister and brother). Since we couldn't leave Chicago without experiencing its world-famous deep-dish pizza, we went to Giordano's for dinner and had the stuffed veggie pizza above, which looked like it wanted to eat us, that's how huge it was. I only managed one piece but, since we drove to Chicago, we were able to bring leftovers home and enjoy the pizza again once we made it back Saturday.

One thing my husband wanted us to do while there was to visit the University of Chicago's Chapel, which is quite a misnomer, considering that the church is as large as a medieval cathedral. Once we walked in, I was sorry not to have my trusty digital camera with me, so the phone camera had to do, but it barely was able to capture the loveliness of the stained-glass windows, which rainbowed against the frame when hit directly by the sun.

The chapel itself, below, where my husband's sister got married more than two decades ago, is truly beautiful and he tells of how her large wedding (200+ guests) seemed dwarfed in the huge structure, and I can see why.

Being at the University of Chicago made me appreciate, even more, my small college on the hill, and the wonderful support and the collegiality that we prize and practice with each other. There's nothing like going to a place that is ranked "higher" and feeling you don't belong there to make you stop looking for greener grass on the other side of your fence and more actively appreciate the grass in your own backyard, so to speak.

While I was in Chicago, I got the news that I had won a competitive one-year fellowship awarded by my small college on the hill for excellence in teaching, which gives me a year-long leave for scholarship, and I also signed an advance contract for my book project with a press, so 2011-12 will be the Year of the Book. The advance contract only means that I get to turn in the manuscript when it's ready next year, not that they have a commitment to publish it, but it's a good start.

All I could think of was how thrilled my father would be at these news and it was rough not being able to share them with him. But, of course, I think he knows and probably has had a hand in all these wonderful things that have happened. Thus, while there were some aspects of that trip to Chicago that were not so positive, at the end of the day, there is much truth in the adage that says, "all is well that ends well."

Migrations

2011-02-22T19:18:00.000-05:00

This has been a common sight around our house this winter, this migration of a group of six or seven deer, all apparently part of the same "family," who migrate to and fro, in front and in back of our house, in search of food.

Although we've had a few days of milder weather, much welcomed after almost two solid months of rather awful winter, we're back to snow and the warm 50s are but a yearned-for memory. The soul, tired of all the stark whiteness and gray of winter, wants to demand sun and warmth and spring but has no one to take those demands to.

At work, I'm almost done with the process of pre-tenure review, which I must admit has been more enervating than I thought. Having colleagues in the classroom observing, and sometimes more than one, has been a new experience. I usually welcome class observations but, this time, feeling that any small mistake may somehow "count against" me has made it less fun than I previously thought it would be.

At any rate, I know it's part and parcel of the process, and I have been spared having four or more people visiting in one day. But after next week, once the department meets to discuss my pre-tenure review, I will be relieved that this part is over.

My papi, who today would have turned 74, would have told me not to worry, would have expressed his unconditional confidence in me and, as a dear friend reminded me today, would have been so proud, so proud. Still, he is not here and it has been a sad day.

But the good news is that next week is also when this dismal February finally ends. There are many reasons to look forward to March, of course, not just because school goes on break but also because winter must, someday soon, give up its hold on everything and then the deer will be less visible and less hungry and everything around us will be reborn again.

Dawning

2011-02-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

This morning, the sky was so pretty, all decked out in pastel pinks and blues, that I just had to take a picture. The earlier rising of the sun and the later setting counter my already-sick-and-tired-of-this-interminable-winter blues and remind me that Spring does spring eternal, like hope.

My semester continues to unfold in surprisingly manageable ways, even though I am teaching three classes. I also really enjoy the teaching aspect again, feeling that I may have figured out a lot during my time off and, consequently, feel more at ease and in command in the classroom. I also am appreciating the ability to (finally!) balance my life and my work. Achieving that balance is a personal pledge and I want to prove to myself that I can do it. So far, so good.

I guess this is a good place to be when I'm only a few months away from getting to the half century, and I am blessed that I feel it has been a good half century, full of peaks and valleys, and some very difficult valleys at that, don't get me wrong. But, overall, I am right where I want to be, pretty much, at this time in my life and that's a true gift, I know.

I still have ambitions and projects to get accomplished, and while my husband insists that I've already made it into some kind of Hall of Fame and need not continue "swinging for the fences" (a metaphor I love since, as a child, I wanted to be a Major League baseball player), I confess that I don't know any other way to play than to bat aiming for that next home-run.

The trouble with instincts

2011-02-05T12:50:00.001-05:00

My crazy dog, Lizzy, who is a Brittany Spaniel and Australian Shepherd mix, has always had a lot more energy than either one of us, ever since she became a part of our household in July 2009, when we moved into this house.

Later that summer, while still fairly new to our family, and while my parents were visiting, Lizzy managed to almost kill my mom of a heart attack when, in pursuit of a chipmunk, she got her head stuck in a plastic outdoor vent and pulled it from its moorings so she was running around with her head caught in the black pipe while my mom tried to dislodge it, convinced that the dog would asphyxiate.

This past fall, Lizzy managed to get herself skunked several times, while trying to attack a skunk that had entered into our yard through a hole in the fence, which my husband later fixed. It was past 10 p.m. and I let her out for her "last call" only to hear the high-pitched yelps and plaintive barks that tell us she's found a critter she wants to kill. The skunk, however, did not have plans to die that night, and, despite the fact that Lizzy kept trying to charge it, the critter won the fight, managing to cover Lizzy's face and her flanks with the worst smell EVER to be found on this earth. At that hour, and on our deck, we had to hose her down with water and mouthwash, which I found on the Internet was a recommended home solution for skunkings (of course, the mouthwash is not to be used on the dog's face but its body).

Today, Lizzy regaled us with her killer instinct yet again when, in pursuit of some small woodland critter, she found a lair and proceeded to dig herself, waist-deep, into a mud hole. Using buckets of warm water this time, because the hose is completely frozen, my husband and I were able to clean her up enough to let her back inside. Now my husband is going to have to go find that hole and try to cover it somehow so that Lizzy can't go back and do a repeat performance but the small woodland creature can still get in and out.

César Millán, of The Dog Whisperer fame, advises that, when choosing a dog, one should pick an animal that has about the same energy level as its owners. In that measure, at the very least, we did not choose wisely, at all.

Winter of our discontent

2011-02-01T20:11:00.000-05:00

While I celebrated the end of 2010, which was an awful year at so many levels, so far, 2011 has been a punishment in the weather department. We've had such unrelenting snowfall that my husband has had to clear our driveway, which is not inconsiderable, more than four or five times in about that number of weeks. It is back-breaking work.

The weather also has been harshly unsympathetic and discouraging for my beloved trail walks with Lizzy, so those have been cut to a bare minimum and only on those days when there is a slight improvement in the weather outlook. Thus, poor Lizzy is stir crazy with cabin fever until she gives up and just mopes, lying on the sofa or the bed with a woeful look.

Then we had an ice storm today and there's more coming tomorrow so, our already difficult driveway that my husband has worked so hard to keep clear, has frozen over like hell will one day and it's a perilous skating rink that now looks like a river of ice.

The driveway was so slippery this morning that we couldn't get my car out so we walked to a neighbor's house, careful to keep to the snow and not the ice so we didn't break our necks or something else in a fall. My neighbor had been able to get his car down his driveway (he lives up the hill, not down like we do) and he was able to drive me to school so that I could teach my classes today. My husband eventually got the car up our small hill and there it is staying overnight so that we have a way to get out of here tomorrow.

Meanwhile, there's more than 1/4 inch of ice on our deck, which means neither Lizzy nor Hamlet want to brave the great outdoors because all they do is slip and slide on the frosting-thick ice.

Like Shakespeare's Richard III we can say, with conviction: "Now is the winter of our discontent." Spring doesn't even seem possible these days.

Oh deer

2011-01-30T13:14:00.000-05:00

In this sequence of photographs, my husband captured the almost daily pilgrimage of a family of deer, who rather nonchalantly cross our front yard on the way to our neighbor's bird feeder. As we approach the middle of winter, especially as hard and cold a winter as this one has been, deer will eat anything they find edible, including bird seed at feeders they can reach.

The only reason we don't have deer pilfering our bird seed here is that our bird-feeding station, which my husband built shortly after we moved in here almost two years ago, is within our fenced-in yard. But we do regularly put out deer food for our resident deer families to help them survive the winter. And, no, they don't become so dependent that it affects their status as wild life since they never come to their feeding spot in spring, summer or even fall, only in winter.

This has definitely been the snowiest winter I can recall for us since we moved to Ohio in 2001. The meteorologist was saying last night that we haven't had a day above 30 since January 2nd. It's not above 30 here yet but it is supposed to perhaps edge above the 20s, which would make it the one seasonal day we've had in a long time. But if I thought February was going to bring relief and live up to its average 40s, I was wrong. Another Arctic blast is expected late next week and the temperatures will not rise from the 20s during the day and dip into the single digits at night. Brrrr, that's all I've got to say about that.

At school, we are now entering the 3rd week of classes and this semester has started much better than my spring semester 2009, which is a blessing. I have three good groups, with engaged and interested students, and I feel myself to be a lot clearer on what works, especially in terms of writing instruction, which I do a lot of in my 100- and 200-level classes. I'm also trying out a new approach in my American Fear class, and in my Hawthorne senior seminar, which is to give the students a grounding in cultural analysis.

With that, I hope to stave off comments such as "I don't care what she [meaning me] says, Signs [the movie] isn't about race," or, "Why can't we just read "The Black Cat" as being just about a black cat?," or, "There's too much race and gender [read feminism] in this class." As we say back home, en guerra avisada no muere gente so we'll see if giving the students a clearer analytical framework up front gives them a sense that there is purpose in using race and gender as analytical lenses, even if, like any other analytical framework, including formal readings, it has its limitations

The fact that I have no new preparations this semester, and that, after seniors graduated and some advisees changed advisors last semester while I was on leave, I have come down from 20-25 advisees to about 15 or so, also has helped make the start of this semester less hectic and from-the-get-go overwhelming than last year's spring. I've also been able to continue working on scholarly projects, such as a proposal for a collection of essays on teaching Hawthorne and a proposal for presenting at MLA 2012, which I hope to submit by month's end on a paper comparing Hawthorne and Poe.

So far, I haven't missed my leave, which was such a gift at such a difficult time. For now, and I hope for the rest of this semester, I am still able to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Or, more appropriate to this climate, take the time to watch the deer and the crows and the birds as they do their best to hold on for spring, which still seems to far, far away.

College learning found lacking

2011-01-19T08:27:00.023-05:00

College learning found lacking (click here to read the story)

This news makes me feel so much better about being such a hardass in my classes with regard to students' analytical thinking and writing.

The new semester started Monday with a vengeance, and while the MLK Days of Dialogue events that I have coordinated now for three years in a row went well, attendance was much lower than in previous years, which was disappointing. (I just found out that all the e-mail announcements I sent to students were returned to my Spam folder!) We are trying to persuade the faculty and administration to find a way to make the day a college-wide event of dialogue, reflection and service.

Between Monday and Tuesday, I taught my three classes and seem to have good groups in my senior seminar and my first-year seminar. My 200-level class seems like it will be more challenging, which may be the nature of the beast (both in terms of theme and nature of the group) and the fact that it is an afternoon class. Still, my senior seminar is in the afternoons and most of those students seem to be on fire, so to speak, even when the class is all Hawthorne, all the time. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I meet the two lower-level seminars for the second time.

I am excited to be back in the classroom and teaching, and that is a good thing since this is the profession that I have chosen. Best of all, this is the first semester in my time working at my small college on the hill that I'm teaching three classes that I have already taught at least once before. That, I realize now, is a huge advantage. Often, I've had at least one (if not two!) new preparations and that's simply ridiculous, as I have learned the hard way.

I've also managed to go to the gym, to make bread and two pies (one rhubarb, one cherry) for my husband, and to give myself personal R&R time so, maybe, just maybe, I'm finally learning to balance my vocation with my life.

Los Angeles

2011-01-09T21:03:00.007-05:00

2011 started busily with a five-day trip to Los Angeles, which I had never visited before, for the main conference of our discipline. My friend TK and I stayed at a hotel in the area known as "L.A. Live," which at night looked like something out of "Blade Runner," with full-color ads streaming live on gigantic screens on the side of buildings.

The best thing about the hotel, though, was that it had a 24-hour gym and a Starbucks right next door so I was able to work out early in the morning and then go get my decaf and read the paper on my Nook with free Wi-Fi. The huge glass-paneled hotel (we had a 16th-floor room!) reflected nicely on the screen of the Nook.

I arrived Wednesday afternoon and presented my paper on Hawthorne the following day and received very positive feedback. On Friday, I attended a couple of panels, including one on Poe, which was fascinating, and also the Ohio State University party for alumni and grad students where I got to talk to old and new friends before TK and I left to have dinner at the best Mexican restaurant I've ever been to, Rosa Mexicano.

We couldn't figure out why the name isn't grammatically correct but there is nothing erroneous about the food, which is sublime. And I even tried their Mexican mojito (known as "La Rumba") and it was superb. TK and I went to dinner with one of her old friends and one of my former graduate student mentees at OSU and we had a blast. Although we are all academics, we were not in the mood to "talk shop" (especially since both TK's friend and my former mentee were in the job market this year) so we talked instead about everything and anything and had a really enjoyable conversation.

On Saturday, TK and I decided that we'd spend the day doing the touristy things in L.A. and we found a tour that was supposed to take us to Hollywood, etc., and then bring us back to Chinatown. But we missed the bus and ended up having to take the subway and then to walk into Chinatown once it was already evening, even though a tour attendant had told me that it was peligroso to do so after dark. There was no danger at all and TK was able to get a few souvenirs and I got myself a little red dragon for my office.

We missed the bus that would've taken us to Chinatown because we spent way too much time on Rodeo Drive, aghast at the gaudy displays of wealth, from the yellow and black Rolls Royce belonging to the designer Bijan Pakzad (who we actually saw) to the several blonds with stiletto boots and fur coats walking their fashionable dogs to the clearly Botoxed and lip-enhanced women to the skinny men in tight-fitting jeans. TK and I both agreed that we would just hate living in a place like that, even if we had all the money in the world to waste.

Today, I'm back home after a very long trek and, although I'm exhausted, I'm so happy to be back where I belong. Downstairs, as I type this, Chiquita is barking and Lizzy is chasing the ball that my husband just threw and the cats are running around and I am in my own private heaven, which is as far away from California as you can get.

Welcome 2011!

2011-01-01T21:57:00.004-05:00

Although 2011 dawned as a very rainy and gray day, by the afternoon the clouds began to break up and the sun eventually showed its bright face, even if for only a few minutes at a time. Still, it was warm enough that we were able to take the dogs to the nearby paved trail and give them a walk. Chiquita didn't want to do the entire mile (I don't think she's going to enjoy the outdoors until we're back to 70 degrees and up) but she did get to pee and poop and smell other dogs and critters on the trail (the rest of the way I carried her inside my jacket).

The first day of 2011 was spent in a very mellow way after we both decided against venturing into the big city for separate errands, opting to stay home, instead. Tomorrow, however, I might get motivated enough to drive to the movies to see "The King's Speech," which I had hoped to see when it was released here on Christmas Day. Instead, that day I took two international students who had spent the holidays here by themselves to see "Black Swan," which was awesome. I'll be going to the movies tomorrow by myself but I don't mind doing that now and again. It's good to practice enjoying doing things on our own, and I'm fortunate to be able to do so.

Earlier this past week I traveled to my sister's in Maryland, where my brother and his family and my mother also visited for the holidays. It was a quick trip but I was blessed to have gathered many wonderful memories while there. One of the best was an almost two-hour conversation between my two teenage nephews, one already in college and one a high school senior, my mom and me, in which the four of us talked about literature, movies, theater, and college life, among other topics. It was simply thrilling to see and admire the kind of young men that my nephews have become. Another was a game of "Apples to Apples," on the last evening I was there, in which the whole family participated and in which I laughed out loud more than I had at any other point in the entirety of 2010.

I returned to Ohio this past Thursday and will be traveling (ugh) again this week to a conference in California. Yesterday, as 2010 ended, I also finished the paper for the conference and my book proposal before my husband and I went off to have dinner at the home of a Puerto Rican friend who is married to a Costa Rican. The amounts of food were biblical and my husband brought his famous coquito (adapted to my sister-in-law's renowned recipe), which people really liked. We left shortly before 11 and then spent a quiet hour here, watching Univisión and waiting for midnight, which came quickly enough, and we were ready for sleep when it came shortly after getting into bed.

Tomorrow it will be six months since my papi left us and his absence is keenly felt, especially since our family spent almost every New Year's Eve together since 1999. But I know that he's in a better place and, like sun breaking through thick gray clouds, that feels like a blessing.

I have great hopes for 2011, and I'm rolling out the red carpet to welcome this new year so excitingly filled with possibility.

2010 is over today! Good riddance, I say!

2010-12-31T09:28:00.004-05:00

2010 has ended with nearly record-breaking colds and snow and lived up, almost to the end, to its personality as a difficult and largely unpleasant year for nearly everyone I know and care for.

The good news, at least weather-wise, is that the forecast for January and February, as my husband informs me, calls for warmer than normal temperatures.

My wish is for a "life" forecast in the new year that is also happier and kinder for us all than it has been in 2010. May 2011 be gentler and more compassionate than its predecessor.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

¡Feliz Navidad!

2010-12-25T09:35:00.004-05:00

This was the song that played on the car radio back in January 1988 when, deathly sick, I was driven by my then-boyfriend to the BWI airport with my mom, who had come to bring me back home. We boarded the plane that would take me back to live permanently in Puerto Rico for the first time since I'd left in 1978, a stint that lasted 13 years until, once more deathly ill, I left the island for Ohio in 2001. A year later, I had the life-saving surgery that gave me this second chance at life.

Thus, this song means a lot to me, not only because it's a Puerto Rican artist singing a happy song about Christmas but because I remember como si fuera ayer my white-knuckled anxiety at traveling in that condition (including the fear that my boyfriend's old car would break down on the BWI parkway on the way to the airport in a dark, chilly winter morning). The car made it to the airport, we made the flight, and the rest, as they say, is history and a much better one, at that.

Back then, the song gave me hope. And it still does so today. ¡Feliz Navidad!

Nochebuena

2010-12-24T08:36:00.003-05:00

I grew up listening to this lovely Villancico about Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I love the idea of a night that anticipates individual and communal redemption.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Winter 2010

2010-12-23T12:13:00.004-05:00

Although winter arrived roaring in these parts at the start of December, it officially began yesterday evening. The little downtown at my small college on the hill is adorned with cheery white lights to combat the frigid somberness that has descended over the landscape.

There is still a lot of beauty to be appreciated and to be found, like the glint of sunshine on freshly packed snow, which makes the little ice crystals look like a treasure of tiny glittering diamonds.

Or the familiar trail that takes on a more measured and circumspect personality, at the same time that it's more open since everything is available to the eyes.

Although 2010 has been a most difficult year and the saddest one of them all because of my father's death in July, I am appreciative of the good things this year has brought, especially the research leave that ends with it.

During this time, I have tried to conquer, and actually may have conquered, my propensity to continually put myself last after my work and have managed to get to the gym almost every single day ever since I returned from Puerto Rico on Dec. 6. That feels like an accomplishment because I've always managed to be very disciplined about my professional responsibilities but not so constant when it comes to doing things that are good for me.

I also took the time this semester to quilt again, rescuing my abuela's machine from oblivion and actually finishing a fall quilt hanging that now graces the guest room furnished with my abuela's antique bedroom set.

Also in personal terms (there has been much achieved that is work-related, too!), I set a weight loss goal of about 10 pounds and am only about 2 pounds shy of that, which is good considering that, starting with Thanksgiving, this is the season for overeating.

I've also kept, more or less well, to my new schedule of trying to go to bed early (before 11 p.m.) and getting up before 8 a.m. so I can make it to the gym early and have the whole day ahead of me to do what needs doing.

These small accomplishments, which do seem major to me after a pretty horrid spring and summer, do balance out, a little bit, this most challenging year. I won't be sad to see 2010 end in a little over a week. But I also can think of reasons to appreciate what this year has brought.

A Navidad story

2010-12-21T10:53:00.007-05:00

My recuerdos are mostly impressionistic rather than exact. Like the ghost of a memory I have of looking down a long flight of steps and of myself as a bald toddler wearing a red shirt, a nearly impossible and improbable recollection. My mom has said that memory may be of the stairs leading to the second-floor apartment my parents first lived in near my grandparents in Río Piedras, after we moved back to Puerto Rico from Boston, where I had been born a year or so before. But one Christmas memory I have is as vivid as a short film playing back in my mind’s eye.

I mostly don’t remember years or chronologies so I have little notion of how old I must have been in this Navidad, but I guess it had to be sometime before I was old enough to know, for sure, that there was no such person as Santa Claus. It was also before my parents decided that the best way to prevent us children from falling prey to the Christmas consumerism that was becoming the norm in the 1970s was to whisk us out of Puerto Rico each holiday season to such far away locations as the then-Soviet Union, Greece and Paris, among others. (Most of the trips were through low-cost educational tours for which my parents saved all year.) This one memory is of a Christmas still in the house behind the hospital, where I lived my entire childhood, until we moved to a newly built condominium shortly before I left for college a month or two short of my 17^th birthday. It must date back to just about when I began to suspect that Santa Claus was really a pen name, so to speak, for my parents.

Inspired by a television ad in which little blonde americanitos ingratiatingly left cookies and milk for Santa, I devised a plan to confirm my suspicions. I would leave similar treats on a plate with a note, asking Santa a question. If Santa didn’t answer, I would know it was because my parents were worried that I would be able to discern their handwriting, which would flush them out of hiding. And, if “he” did answer, then I would have no trouble recognizing my parents’ handwriting, which I knew well, and I would have concluded an investigation worthy of my long-time hero, Sherlock Holmes. (This was after I’d gone through all the closets of the house and looked under all the beds in all the rooms, trying to find the hidden cache of toys, and had found not a one.)

Having worked out all this in my head, I proceeded that Nochebuena to implement my ploy so I could prove to myself (and have demonstrable proof to show my parents and two younger siblings), that Santa Claus was just a big hoax. Satisfied of my ingenuity, I went to bed early, without the usual fuss, and didn’t wake until I heard my siblings’ screams of joy at what Santa had left. In years past, mind you, I had always gone to bed later than everyone else, staying up until the wee hours, seated cross-legged on the floor of the hallway outside the room I shared with my sister, reading. On Christmas Day, I usually also awakened before everyone else, climbing over the baby gate at the top of the stairs and stealthily walking into a living room filled with toys (I realize now that our Santa lists must have, indeed, been daunting for a pair of working parents).

There were two identical love seats, upholstered in olive green, and an uncomfortable Spanish-style chair, upholstered in red and held together with large leather belts, placed, like a throne, between the facing sofas. It was on that chair that my brother’s toys were arranged while my sister and I each got our toys placed on one of the sofas. On those earlier years when I was the first one awake, I sometimes took the opportunity to inspect my sister’s treasures and trade them for those, on my sofa, which I wasn’t so pleased by. She claims that this is why she got the same furry riding donkey two years in a row but I more clearly remember trading her some uninteresting baby doll clothes for a set of sparkly Barbie shoes.

This one morning, however, I wasn’t the first but the last one to arrive downstairs to bask in this so-called Santa’s generosity. Almost in awe, I approached the table where I had left the cookies and the milk and blinked twice, taking a sharp breath in, when I noticed that the cookies were gone (there were crumbs on the plate) and the milk had been gulped down almost greedily, as if by a thirsty man wearing a red winter suit while flying on a sled led by sweaty reindeer through the tropical night sky. I took the note with trembling hands and my eyes widened as I saw that Santa had answered my question. What shocked me, however, was that the handwriting was not at all like that of either one of my parents! I had been wrong!, I surmised in awe. The fat gringo in the tacky suit existed, after all.

While I don’t remember what it was that I asked Santa, or what it was that "he" answered, and I never found out who wrote back to me that night, the note was a magical present that I have never forgotten.

Fire and snow

2010-12-18T22:57:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, my husband built the first fire of the season and we spent several hours just sitting in our cozy living room, enjoying the lovely warmth that it provided. Darwin, by far the smartest of our creatures at that moment, made the best decision by getting the closest, and, at one point, we realized that all five furry children had gathered around the fireplace to bask in its calorcito navideño.

There has been little, if any, calorcito around here weather wise for the past two weeks, basically the entirety of this month, when we've been buried under more and more inches of snow. At least today we got some sun even if the windchill was below zero and the temperatures refused to edge above the low 20s, which is 20 degrees colder than normal for this time of year in Ohio. There is more snow forecast for the start of the week while in Maine, where my sister in law lives, temperatures have been in the 50s. Anyone still pooh poohing climate change needs a new brain, that's for sure.

I'm now less than a month away from returning to the classroom and to full-time work and I'm actually looking forward to it. But before January rolls around bringing not just a new year but a new set of challenges and opportunities in spring semester, I will travel at month's end to spend a few days with my family in Maryland for our first such gathering without papi and then I will be in L.A. for a few days in January for the main conference in my discipline. For someone who simply hates to travel (I love getting to places but leaving my home and the actual taking of and being in planes I simply abhor), I'll have made three trips in two months and then I have two other trips pending one for February and another for March. Just thinking about all that flying makes me queasy.

Now that the semester is finally over my weeks will be less busy (even when I haven't been teaching I've found ways to keep myself occupied) since I won't have any meetings with students or colleagues. I'm especially looking forward to a visit from my good friend MC next week and then to a visit by my in-laws who'll be here before Christmas. On Christmas Day, weather permitting, I hope to get to the theaters to watch "The King's Speech," which has gotten a lot of buzz and has Colin Firth as the lead (the immortal Fitzwilliam Darcy in A&E's production of Pride and Prejudice).

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for my Nook, which I ordered yesterday (yes, I've gone over to the Other Side of e-book readers!) after figuring how much I would save just in the amount of books I purchase on a monthly basis, and after my husband gave me his blessing, noting that anything that kept him from having to lug heavy boxes of books was a good idea. I won't have that until next week but I do hope to get it in time for my travels so that I'm not the one lugging 4 or 5 heavy books plus several magazines in my backpack (And guess what e-book I'll buy first? Yes, you guessed it! Pride and Prejudice it is).

The weather doesn't cooperate so it's hard to get outside and do the things we love to do, like walk the dogs on the trails (we can't walk Chiquita any more because she doesn't do well in cold weather). The good side of that is that I'm making it a point to go to the gym every day (except this morning when I walked Lizzy in the biting cold). Today, Lizzy and Chiquita (who are not the best of friends or playmates) even shared the big chair where papi used to sit to read, and they snuggled up in their respective places to take their midday nap.

This cold spell may just be what we have to get used to for the next two and a half months that winter will be around so the dogs are a good inspiration for finding ways to make the best of what is sure to be the winter of our discontent.

Getting in the spirit

2010-12-11T08:27:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was the last day of the semester, and even though I've been on leave, after returning from Puerto Rico on Monday, I had a busy week of meetings with students and colleagues either for work-related or celebratory reasons.

While I know, as some well-meaning friends noted, that I wasn't "supposed" to be doing any student-related work during this time, I've had a productive research leave so keeping in touch with my advisees and providing the help they need didn't "interrupt" anything I needed to get done during this time. And while I have vowed that I will be careful in safe-keeping my own time and well-being, I am guided by the principle that, in addition to being a good teacher, I also want to be a valuable role model and mentor in my students' lives, something I lacked when I was in college. If I can do what they need, without violating my vow to myself, I will.

Having a busy week didn't mean I wasn't able to pester my husband into getting the house decorated for Christmas, something that always makes me happy during this season. Even when we lived in the rather run-down junior faculty apartments of my small college on the hill, I decorated the tiny apartment and tried to make it cheery inside and out. But I think this year my husband did the best job ever and the house, lit up at dusk, looks picture perfect to me.

While there is much sadness in my heart that this is the first Christmas to be spent without my papi, I don't feel him entirely gone and I think that's a blessing. He may not be here physically but there isn't a day that I don't remember him and that gives me great comfort. And, at month's end, I'll travel to Maryland for a a couple of days to be with my entire family, as we keep the tradition my dad started in 1999 of getting together for Christmas the New Year's. That was when he thought the world might end as we knew it with the turn of the millennium (in terms of the chaos with computer clocks that so many people had predicted).

Ultimately, Christmas for me isn't about the presents or the parties (not that we have many of those around here) or the fat white guy in a tacky red suit that exploits the poor flying reindeer. It's about traditions and the birth of new possibilities and about re-examining our lives to make sure that we are being true to our beliefs (and I don't mean religious ones) and are leading an examined and purposeful life, one that, hopefully, moves outside and beyond ourselves in its purpose.

Last day in the tropics

2010-12-05T16:58:00.004-05:00

Today, my last day in Puerto Rico, my mami and I went to the gym early and then returned home to change before we embarked on our planned day of a museum visit and a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.

After we made ourselves presentable, the first stop was to the nearby Starbucks, of course, where my never-varying order of a decaf latte with 3 Splendas (during their recent visit in Ohio, my nephew pointed out that this was a lot of sweetness since one Splenda is supposed to equal at least one teaspoon of sugar) tastes much better here in Puerto Rico than anywhere else where I've had one. I don't know if it's the coffee or the milk or the combination of both but even Starbucks' taste improves in my Caribbean island.

Then we moved on to the Museum of Puerto Rican Art (MAPR for its Spanish initials) to view the new exhibit on José Campeche, the 18th century painter, who was the first Puerto Rican painter of renown. His Dama a caballo, below, not only shows his skill as a portraitist and his attention to minute detail but also gives us a fascinating glimpse into what the clase pudiente (the moneyed class) in the walled city of San Juan, where he lived all of his life, looked like.

His paintings are breathtaking and a great reminder that Puerto Rico may be small as an island but it has produced gigantic talent, refuting my Harvard professor's claim that small countries could not produce anything worthy (he used to claim that Rubén Darío, who hailed from Nicaragua, proved that talent is completely unrelated to where the person is born, rather than considering the artist as an extension of his environment).

After the art museum, we went in search of a T-shirt for the Broadway show In the Heights, which we saw Saturday afternoon, and which, again, made me feel so proud to be a Puerto Rican. A complete re-writing, and a postcolonial writing back to West Side Story, there is no pathology in In the Heights but it's, instead, a celebration of the life of Latin@s in the diaspora, and of Puerto Rican identity outside of the island, in particular. While watching the show, and crying and laughing along its beautiful music, sets, acting, singing and choreography, I thought of how many in Puerto Rico often reject those Puerto Ricans born and raised in the States as "not Puerto Rican" enough, and of how this Tony award-winning musical laughs, loudly and convincingly, in the face of such provincial and small-minded beliefs. I can't wait for the film of the musical to be done so I can teach it alongside West Side Story as the Puerto Rican version (instead of the white version) of Puerto Rican-ness in New York.

Once the T-shirt was secured, we went on to Aurorita's, the Mexican restaurant that was a tradition in my family when I was a kid and which has become a tradition for my sister's and brother's families when they visit Puerto Rico, and where my husband and I had our very first date. Unfortunately, the food wasn't anything to write home about but my mom and I had a nice time before calling it a day and returning home a little bit exhausted by all our small adventures.

Tomorrow, I emprendo camino back to Ohio, where it's currently "pouring" snow (to quote my disgusted husband) and where temperatures are in the low 20s at their best. While I certainly don't look forward to leaving my mom and my calorcito borincano for the nasty Ohio winter, I am looking forward to getting back to my own home in the diaspora. It may be far from this gloriously beautiful (if troubled) island, but it's my home now, nonetheless.

In Puerto Rico

2010-12-04T08:44:00.005-05:00

I've been in my beautiful patria since Thursday when I arrived to spend a few days with my mami before the holidays. It has been strange being here, at my parents' home, without my papi and his absence is felt keenly. But my mami has made changes in the apartment that make it welcoming and cozy, and which help her cope with her new life as a widow.

Yesterday, after spending part of the morning in Old San Juan, we went to our favorite inn by the beach and had fruit frappes, reminiscing about the many times the entire family spent at that beach and how we watched my nieces and nephews grow up chasing the tide and "jumping" the waves, always with my dad, who loved the sea and the beach until he became too sick and frail to enjoy it.

For the past few mornings, I've been able to peruse the newspapers, no longer all cut up by my dad, who used to get up very early to read and underline stories in four different newspapers and then he would clip them to file in voluminous file folders where he kept tract of the island's history as it unfolded (he was a political analyst so he saw this as his job). Now that I can read the papers whole, not in tatters as it used to be when I slept in and didn't get to them before my father's handy news clipping tool was put to use, I found several stories that I know I'd be discussing with him, if he was still here.

The first one is about a pro-commonwealth legislator, accused of domestic violence, who has been asked by the party president to step down but who refuses, stating that he has "committed no crime," even as his party begins the process to kick him out of the Legislature. While the legislator sticks to his guns and refuses to resign, there appears to be enough evidence to process him legally, something that should give him a clue that being publicly humiliated in court is never a good idea for a political career. But, perhaps, like many abusive men, he simply doesn't perceive what he allegedly did to his wife as a crime since there is a machista cultural code that still considers such behaviors as "normal," and not just in my culture.

The other story that struck me refers to the continued fallout of statements made by the pro-statehood Governor's Chief of Staff that he would "forcibly kick the students out" (los sacaría a patadas) of the public university, referring to students who are threatening another strike because the administration wants to impose an $800 fee on them. On an island where almost 70% of the population lives under the federal poverty line, that amount seems beyond ridiculous. On the other hand, the public university is now on probation by the accrediting institution and went through a prolonged strike earlier this year, which makes threats of another strike seem like the throwing out of the baby with the bath water, especially when it is rumored that the current administration wants to privatize the more than a century-old institution.

As if the situation wasn't incendiary enough, in comes the Chief of Staff to make ill-advised and violence-inducing comments and defends himself in today's paper as "having the right to call things as they are, without euphemisms (decir las cosas como son, sin eufemismos)" and to "give the alert, in my own way, directly and with truth as a guide and calling things by their names (dar la voz de alerta, de la manera en que yo soy, directo, con la verdad de frente y llamando las cosas por su nombre)." Since when is shooting first and asking questions later a smart move by or a virtue in a political official? I can't think of any Chief of Staff in the States (or anywhere else for that matter) who would keep the job if he went on a radio show and spoke off the cuff to say things that made the administration look bad. Didn't that much-hailed U.S. general in Iraq lose his job because he did a similar thing? Why would the Puerto Rico governor condone his Chief of Staff, arguing that the latter was just "frustrated" when he made the statements? Because of his position, the Chief of Staff should set the example of moderation and professionalism. But I guess that's not the standard that this administration is following, which begs the question of why do they expect more from the students when the norm they set is one of confrontation and violence?

Many years ago, when I was a newspaper editor and a reporter here, such happenings were the bread and butter of my life. Now, those years are far away but I can still feel the frustration that many of those who live here feel on a daily basis. Still, also on a daily basis I see and feel the promise of not only a gloriously beautiful country but of its beautiful, intelligent and committed youth, who, hopefully, will give us all a better future.

Giving thanks

2010-11-28T18:01:00.003-05:00

This Thanksgiving was a very special one, even though my papito couldn't be here to enjoy it with us. My sister came with her three teens (the oldest will be 18 and the youngest turns 13 in January) and her dogs (one of them we kenneled at our nearby vet's office so we wouldn't have to have seven animals in the house at one time), and a lovely time was had by all.

My godchildren are luminous, sweet young adults, and it's a pleasure to be with them. And my sister is a great mother, who has managed to do the very hard work of raising good people while maintaining high standards for them at all times. With three teens, it's exhausting work, for sure, and I admire that she manages to do it with so much love and patience.

For Thanksgiving, my sister and I cooked up a storm, including a 13-pound turkey that came out beautifully, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (my favorite!), broccoli and onion casserole, cranberry sauce, two pumpkin pies, two apple pies, and a spinach and strawberry salad. Our dear friends, IL and TH, who fed my husband and I for two consecutive Thanksgivings in 2008 and 2009, came with their two kids and brought caramelized carrots and a glorious salad with mandarin oranges and pecans, so the amount of food was biblical. Even though our dining room is small, we were able to set up a small table for the children and all the adults and the teens crowded around our dinner table. It was exactly as Thanksgiving ought to be.

Now that my sister has returned to her home in Maryland, I'm left with a bittersweet feeling and an unexpected yearning. This might just have been the last time that we will all get together for Thanksgiving that way, so I'm especially thankful for the wonderful memories of this past week. The last time my sister came with the kids for Thanksgiving was our very first one in our first house in Ohio in 2001. Nine years is a long time to wait for an encore but it was worth every minute of it.

My mom traveled to be with my brother and his family in Tennessee and they also had a lovely time together. I am deeply grateful that I have a family that, even though my father is now absent, still makes the point to get together and enjoys doing so. Family, both the blood and the chosen one, is what I gave thanks for on Thanksgiving and what I will continue to give thanks for every day after.

Mold breaker

2010-11-23T12:27:00.007-05:00

One of the personality traits of Chiquita that I love most is that she never is content to meet expectations. When we adopted her, we were told that she would not like walks, that she would be a total couch potato, that she would hate to get her paws wet and would prefer to be carried rather than walk on a leash.

As if on purpose, Chiquita has gone against pretty much all conventions. For one, she loves her walks and will strut just as long and as enthusiastically as Lizzy, who is a Brittany. Chiquita doesn't like to be in her carrier and doesn't much like to be picked up when there is walking and smelling to be done.

Her latest surprise to us is how, by watching Lizzy chase her ball, Chiquita has learned to fetch and retrieve a ball that is almost bigger than she is.

Exceeding expectations. That's a dog after my own heart.

Last ride

2010-11-22T22:28:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, on an unusually balmy and breezy Sunday for November in these parts, my husband and I took our very last motorcycle ride to a nearby orchard, where they still have relatively fresh local apples available. Our favorite orchard is closed for the season, but this one keeps their extra apples in cold storage, where they stay more or less fresh for a longer time and there's plenty to choose from for the ubiquitous Thanksgiving apple pie.

The ride was a lovely way to enjoy the last of the warm weather before a cold front threatens to rain and possibly snow on us later this week, probably on Thanksgiving Day. Despite the dire forecast, I'm excited because my sister and her three teens, all of whom are my godchildren, are coming to stay with us for the first time since my husband and I moved to Ohio in 2001. It's been nine years but nunca es tarde cuando la dicha es buena. We'll have a full house on Thanksgiving because my Puerto Rican friend from the Bronx and her husband and two kids are also coming and that's exactly as it should be. It doesn't get any better than that.

Since it was most likely our very last ride of 2010, I thought I'd take a picture of the helmet that my husband gave me as a present a year or so ago, and which he recently enhanced with a sticker that says: "Tribú del Chihuahua." The sticker is perfect for me, for more reasons than one. That's the name that the friends of Valentino Rossi, the greatest MotoGP motorcycle racer ever, call themselves and since I'm a big fan of Rossi's, plus I actually have a Chihuahua (Chiquita), the sticker is perfect for me. (I love the way my husband thinks!)

These moments of happiness all have an edge of sadness since this Thanksgiving is the first I will spend without my dad. He wasn't big on the holiday (though he did like to come to our house in Puerto Rico when we lived there) but not having him with us gives us all the more reason to find ways to make this one particularly special, particularly familial. That's why my mom is going to my brother's and my sister is coming here so we'll all be, in our respective places, en familia, as it should be. And that's something we can all give thanks for.

Learning

2010-11-14T12:04:00.003-05:00

My wonderful handyman of a husband today hung the quilted wall hanging from a nice hanger I bought yesterday at a curiosity shop in town and which we decided to place over the bed in our smaller guest room, where my abuela's antique furniture now lives and where, not so long ago but when the room looked very different, my papi abandoned this world for the next one.

I think he would be very pleased with the change in the room's decor and would sing the praises of the quilted wall hanging, even as full of imperfections as it is, so I'm glad that it hangs there, just in case his spirit stops by to visit now and then, as I hope he does.

My next step will be to start on the longer, American Beauty quilt and see how far I can get with that one before the spring semester begins a little more than two months' from now. I am also very grateful to my papi for this leave, which I was only able to get now because of his terminal illness, and which has been a blessing not just because it has allowed me to work on my research and class-planning uninterruptedly but, most of all, because I've had time to, unlike Humpty Dumpty, put myself together again in a world that seems less comprehensible now that he is not in it.

It has also been rewarding to see how, even though I have not been an active presence at my small college on the hill this semester, my 200-level class filled quickly and with 18 people on the wait list I could actually teach two full sessions of that course alone. My other two classes, including my senior seminar, also filled quickly and, in that class, I'm very much looking forward to teaching a group of mostly former students, some of which are the best I've ever had. In planning for next semester, I'm already working hard to make sure I do justice to their and my expectations.

I also recently received a very exciting offer to propose an article for a book on approaches to teaching Hawthorne, which is just perfectly timed, given that I will be teaching the seminar next semester. I've ordered some of the books in the series so I can see the kind of genre this article would fall under and so I can start outlining what I would want to write about in teaching Hawthorne. It would be quite the wonderful coup if I could get an essay into that book. It's a lot to wish for but, as my grad school adviser always said, "Shoot for the stars, and for nothing less!"

These little events more than make up for recent challenges, like having to have a very pricey emergency root canal on a tooth that already had a very pricey crown put on it to try to save it, with no assurances that this second attempt will eventually save that tooth. It may well be that after spending more on one tooth than I have spent in clothes and shoes this year (if you know me well, you can imagine the price tag on that tooth), I will still have to pay more and endure having it ultimately pulled. I find root canals and tooth pulls, two procedures that I know much more than I care to, to be some of the most physically violent and traumatic events in my life these days, in my life that has known several major surgeries and other invasive procedures. En fin, ni modo. Pa'trás ni pa' coger impulso, as my papi would say.

I've also watched myself age considerably this year, especially over the past few months, as my erstwhile raven-black hair has become increasingly peppered with unruly white (not sure why they're called "gray") hairs, which I am not inclined to dye anymore. I've also stopped having my hair flat-ironed and am wearing it natural for the first time in many, many years. While there are political and personal reasons for that, there is also the influence of watching the hair around my temples get very fine and brittle and the fear of impending bald spots has made any further hair straightening a bad idea.

Plus, even when I have been on leave and not exerting myself at all in the same crazy pace that my normal semesters take, I am tired by the day's end and often in need of lying down for a short while before I get a second wind to finish the night. I've also become more forgetful, which isn't a trait I'm used to having to deal with as much. It's odd and somewhat frustrating when those around me pooh pooh my talk of aging and seem resistant to acknowledging that I am not in my 20s, 30s, or even early 40s anymore. That my energy levels are not as they used to be and that what I want out of life significantly differs from those who are, at the very least, several decades' away from where I find myself.

My husband and I recently agreed that the turn to 50 is something else altogether, and that aging becomes noticeably more palpable every single day, in one reminder or another. At any rate, aging is inevitable, and I plan to do it as gracefully and creatively as I can. Taking up quilting at what seems like a late stage may be part of that plan. Who knows? We'll have to see what the future brings.

Finished!

2010-11-11T13:15:00.006-05:00

Today, I went back to quilting school so that my teacher could "fix" some unseemly puckering and "bubbling" that had happened to my quilt, which she insists was caused, not by my lack of skill (as is my theory), but because of my ancient Singer, whose quilting foot doesn't really press down on the fabric as it should.

She spent about an hour and a half ripping and resewing (with a newer machine at her shop) and we talked about our lives -- she's a nurse and a mother of three teenagers. And then she had me test that machine, which one of her "ladies" is selling, and which is a quilting paso fino compared to my old Singer workhorse. It would cost me a third of what it sells for new and it has everything I would need but I'm not sure how much more quilting I'll be able to do for the rest of the year, especially next semester when I return to full-time work. Plus, large purchases (of more than $200, say) always make me nervous.

One of my favorite parts of quilting is sewing on the binding, which is done by hand, and which I found to be very therapeutic. I still intend to take on the American Beauty quilt and will probably sign on for individual classes to get that started. I would like to continue to have a project that has nothing to do with my work and which engages my creative and manual skills.

The fall-inspired wall hanging is finished just in time. This week we have Indian Summer here and are enjoying lovely temperatures in the 60s (I even have a window and the sliding door to the back open) but, after this weekend, we go into more wintry temperatures in anticipation of what promises to be a very cold winter (a record-breaking crop of acorns this year suggests so, according to some experts).

As late fall shifts into winter, and the trees have lost their leaves and the colors turn to browns and grays, my quilt stands as a remembrance of early fall's flamboyance. I'm glad I made it, warts and all. And what I've learned is that quilting, in many ways, is like any good relationship: challenging, inspiring, fun, maddeningly annoying sometimes, but, ultimately, magically satisfying, if obviously imperfect.

An examined life

2010-11-06T09:43:00.006-05:00

A dear friend talks about her "practice of thankfulness," or the way that she tries to instill that awareness in herself and in her children so that they also are conscious of the blessings in their lives. I very much admire her for that.

As I move toward 50, and after having what could be described as a not-particularly-easy life (battling a disabling and nearly fatal chronic illness for 15 years between my 20s and 40s, having several surgeries and difficult recoveries, having to abandon or adapt life choices because of physical limitations, and struggling with related health challenges) the practice of gratitude (to coin my friend's term) is something I am deeply committed to.

In that vein, I believe it's important to give thanks each and every night for the good and the bad in our lives (after all, they are mirrors of each other), and to make the effort to sincerely appreciate those around us who make a positive difference. Perhaps even to appreciate those who we don't like very much or who are negative forces in our lives because they may be unexpected sources of strength or of insights that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. In my case, I try to remember to regularly tell (and show, which is actually more important) my husband, my family, and my friends how much I love and appreciate them, and how much they mean in my life.

I pray that I always have the self awareness to improve myself before I expect or demand that anyone else be better and that I never take for granted the blessings around me, or fail to notice all that I have to be grateful for, or forget to work hard to be as good a friend, wife, daughter, teacher, mentor, sister or colleague, as I can be.

An unexamined life, the great philosopher is said to have said, is not worth living. As I begin to feel how fast one ages at this point in life, I start to realize that an unexamined life isn't very much of a life at all.

Found beauty

2010-11-05T08:54:00.004-05:00

There is a gray, sad starkness to November that often weighs on the soul, especially a Caribbean soul, like mine, which gravitates toward vibrant colors and lush foliage.

But, even in such times, there is beauty to be found. The colors of the setting sun, seen "through the bones of November," as my husband put it, is more spectacular, a sight that would be concealed by the trees during warmer times.

Bolstering

2010-11-04T07:00:00.004-05:00

On these chilly, chilly days, when the frost covers the grass until almost noon, Chiquita doesn't enjoy our walks as much as she does in warmer weather and I often find myself having to pick her up, place her inside my jacket, and carry her most of the way.

There is another type of bolstering that I'm also doing these days. While I'm officially on leave this semester, I decided that I would meet with my student advisees this month to discuss pre-registration for spring since, as their returning adviser then, I will have to handle any problems that might arise with class schedules once the new semester starts. By the time this week ends, I will have met with about 20 students, some of them for an hour or more, some of them twice, and some not even my advisees, but who wanted guidance.

On the days I've had a full schedule of meetings, and I've found myself more tired than usual by evening, I've had to remind myself of the energy expended in these efforts, often trying to bolster students' confidence or helping them figure out their paths during the upcoming semester, if not their upcoming years in college and beyond. This also reminds me of what regular semesters are like for some of us who have many advisees. In spring, for example, I will not only have 20 students to advise but also up to 50 students to teach (still, that should be better than last semester, when I had 25 advisees and 62 students!).

There is, indeed, a lot of effort expended on doing the bolstering, and I am grateful that this is only one aspect of what I do because I've learned that it's not healthy to allow the needs of others to consume your life. I also appreciate that my advisees, in their turn, bolster me when they express their gratitude for my advice or say they're looking forward to taking a class with me. When I hear: "I'm so glad you're back!" or "I've missed you so much," I know I've made the right decision in meeting with them while on leave (a decision some friends have questioned). And I like that I can honestly say: "I'm glad to be back, too!"

Friendships

2010-10-31T11:15:00.002-05:00

I don't think we come to understand the true value of friendships (or who is truly a good friend) until we've hit the 40s. I just turned 49 and realize that, while I have a lot of acquaintances, I can count my closest friends with one hand and still have fingers left.

Friendships and birthdays are related for me because, since I was young, my parents would have me invite my friends so they could join us for pizza on my day of celebration. My best friend in high school, a friend of 30+ years now, would joke that he was always the one constant every year at those dinners. On my 15th birthday, my father said I could invite 15 friends to a nice restaurant, and the menu, signed by all those who attended, is stashed in a memory box somewhere in my basement. The following year, only my one friend was a repeat among the smaller group I invited to celebrate then.

His friendship always meant a lot to me and it survived my going away to college and medical school for him and graduate school for me again and again. But when we both got involved with our life partners, it gradually stopped being what it had been and became more a lovely memory of how close two people can be even when they are "just friends."

These days, I am still blessed with good friends, but unlike when I was in high school and hung out mostly with a pack of boys, I have mostly women friends now (except for my beloved husband). Of course, these relationships aren't the same as those I had when I was younger, especially because each of us has very busy lives or we live miles and miles apart so it's hard to find and make the time to connect. But they are just as treasured, if not more so.

Last night, a couple of friends invited us to their house for a lovely dinner and they surprised me with this coat for Chiquita, which is just what I was looking for but hadn't found. It was my birthday present from them and it was perfect. It should help Chiquita better handle the upcoming winter, which is just around the corner.

What I know now, which I didn't know so much when I was younger (perhaps even into my early 40s), is that it's not important to have many friends or even a constant group of friends. What is so important is to have a few friends, as I do now, who are loving and appreciative and make me feel that I matter to them and who give friendship in equal measure to the one they receive from me. That is a blessing to be deeply thankful for, as this year begins my journey toward the half century of life.

Little daily blessings

2010-10-24T21:20:00.006-05:00

The ability to find the little daily blessings is a skill that I try to work on a lot these days, even while I deal with the eternal crabbiness of impending menopause. I've never been a patient person, but at this age, as I near 49, patience is a highly priced commodity in my life. That's why I love quilting, because it forces me to be patient.

Having five animals, while not generally contributing to the patience department since they all have their quirks and needs and decidedly maddening traits, also forces me to try to be more patient since animals, especially dogs, are keenly attuned to non-verbal cues, and Chiquita, as a Chihuahua, is extremely sensitive to any cross look or pose or tone.

Hamlet, on the other hand, is pretty much inured and immune to anything that doesn't suit his mood. These days, he's mostly going out the back door to come around to the front of the house, looking for the raccoon that he tousled with a few weeks' back, and then begging to be let in so he can repeat the routine again. Talk about cultivating patience when you become a door-woman for a cat.

More recently, he's decided that if he hides below the bird bath, perhaps a clueless bird will miss his girth and blackness and his very loud bell (his collar snaps off so that he can't get in trouble if it gets caught), and actually become his prey. We could think of Hamlet as hopeful, but I prefer to suggest that his IQ isn't very impressive in cat (or any other) terms.

My husband often says: "I had a fish," when we begin conversations about how frustrating (and expensive!!) life with five animals can be. And he's right. When I met him, my husband had a goldfish named Aureliano, who eventually died. When I suggested I'd replace the fish, my then-husband-to-be adamantly refused.

In marrying me, his life got a lot more complicated, first with two cats, then one dog, then another cat who adopted us, then another dog who adopted us, then only two dogs when the two old cats died, but then there was a new cat and then another when we moved to Ohio and then the two old dogs died and there was one new dog and then Hamlet and then Chiquita.

But, as challenging as it can be, I guess that "raising" five creatures is a lot like motherhood. There are many difficulties and low points and times when I wish I'd never had any of them, or that I could give them back, but, ultimately, the devotion they offer and the laughs they give are part of those little blessings of life that sometimes make a hard day more bearable and a good day even better.

Neatly Poe-esque

2010-10-21T19:00:00.004-05:00

(The bright moon tonight shining behind the dark battlements of a quirky college building made for a perfect pre-Halloween and nicely Poe-esque shot, and I was glad to have my camera with me for a change. The crows are actually statues? sculptures? on top of the building named after a famous poet and literary theorist.)

Piecing ends

2010-10-16T14:47:00.006-05:00

Last Thursday, I sewed the inner border of the quilt (the black border) during class time and the homework was to sew, at home, the outer border (the fall print fabric I picked out first when I initially conceived of what will soon become a wall hanging).

Earlier today, I finished my homework and am pleased with the results. This coming week, we'll do the binding and maybe the actual quilting (today I also bought my "walking foot" for that purpose -- I have to say I love these quilting terms!).

When I did my first outer border strip, I somehow didn't piece it right and ended up having to do the "frog stitch" (as the Mom of Dr. S, an accomplished quilter, told me it's called): rip it, rip it rip it! It's amazing what an exercise in patience it is to rip the tiny seams of a quilted piece. But I need to cultivate that virtue so I just did it and paid more attention the second time around.

Not only is my small quilt coming along, but yesterday I also placed my pre-tenure review materials on reserve in the library and in a box (with color-coded folders!) in my department's secure closet. While my actual review doesn't start until January (since I'm on leave this fall), I wanted my colleagues to have access to the materials earlier, rather than later, so that those who want to work ahead of the deadline can do so.

This is also the completion of my 49th year, which I will celebrate on October 29th, with my mami (who arrives tomorrow!!) and my husband. I have decided that for my 50th birthday I will come up with some big shindig (perhaps even a restorative trip to the Red Mountain Spa, where I've been wanting to go for years). We'll see.

For now, I'm thankful for the way that endings become beginnings and beginnings signal endings. As my favorite month, October, comes to a close, along with these other projects, different ones await (perhaps even a winter quilt?).

Blessed with fall beauty

2010-10-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

On a recent fall walk, my husband took these lovely photos. It is a blessing to live in a such a beautiful place.

The most beautiful day of fall

2010-10-09T19:30:00.008-05:00

My husband went out on the bike and took these pictures this afternoon. This was, without a doubt, the most beautiful day around here this fall.

Finished with blocks

2010-10-08T21:15:00.004-05:00

Finishing the first stage of the quilted wall hanging, after doing all the cutting and piecing, and most of the pinning, and all the sewing myself on my abuela's rusty-but-still-trusty old Singer gives me a wonderful sense of accomplishment, even when (and probably because) the quilt is full of imperfections.

Quilting is an exercise in patience, something I've always been short on. But having to pin precisely and then, often, having to rip seams apart because I've made a mistake definitely cultivates focus and a commitment to do the best job possible without allowing my compulsively perfectionist side to take over.

Today, I went to a make-up class since I'll be missing one session while my mami is here visiting in a few weeks, so I was able to catch up with all the sewing. However, once I finished the face of the quilt, so to speak, my teacher and I noticed that I'd sewn the upper right hand larger block of four squares the wrong way. The purple was supposed to be where it is now, in the uppermost right-hand corner, and the block with black squares was supposed to be next to the red friendship star. The teacher said I could leave it the way it was but I decided that, when I got home, I would rip the seams (something I've gotten really good at), pin it very carefully, and sew it again the right way.

That's what I just did tonight and the face of the wall hanging quilt we're making is now done. Next Thursday, we'll move on to the borders and the quilt will be nearly completed, to be finished probably on the day before my 49th birthday.

Getting this done, and having it look not half bad, has given me great encouragement to pursue the bedspread quilt that I've made a deposit to purchase the kit for. Once I'm done with this project, and before the semester begins in January, I'm going to start my larger quilt and see how that does.

I really enjoy quilting, even more than I imagined I would when I decided I wanted to give it a try two years ago. I think I can sense my abuela smiling because, while she was not a quilter, she always wanted me to have her sewing machine, even when I hadn't sewn a thing since she had put me through sewing classes when I was a little girl. She must have known that I had it in me all along.

Coming along

2010-10-05T19:54:00.006-05:00

There has not been much time for the past week to do much quilting (what with my sister and niece visiting so we could all go see "Legally Blond - The Musical" and then having to take Magellan back to the vet and then going in to Columbus today for several errands and then returning for meetings led by Dr. S about how to better teach writing) but this was the status of the fall quilt project last Thursday, before we learned to make "flying geese." (I don't have those finished so there's no update on those yet.)

The "friendship star" to the far right corner didn't pass muster with my demanding quilting teachers, so that's going to get scrapped for a better star that I plan to finish tomorrow. I'll also have to finish my two "flying geese" so that the blocks for the quilt will be completed and I can learn how to put these together and then frame the blocks with my chosen background fabric.

From this perspective, the quilt looks a lot less fall-ish (read: less burnt oranges, reds and yellows) than I'd envisioned but we'll just have to see what emerges once the blocks sit against their background (the fabric that frames the purple friendship star). I'm looking forward to seeing it all finished in the next few weeks, and I plan to register for a second beginner's quilting class although I doubt that I'll have any time for quilting next semester since I'll be fully back on the job AND being reviewed for pre-tenure purposes. (Plus, I'll be teaching on the day and time that this semester's quilting class has been offered.)

For now, I'm really glad I'm taking the class and the patience that I have to exercise each time I have to rip apart a seam (and it is very often in my case!) is truly surprising and gives me hope that I'm not hopelessly impatient and short-tempered.

As an early birthday present (I turn 49 years old before this month is over), Dr. S gave me an online "course" to develop courage and gratitude, and to learn to "consume hope." It sounds intriguing and today's message was: "No One Belongs Here More Than You. Take Your Place Now," which seemed eerie given that, after my father's death this summer and after a few frustrating developments both personal and professional, I've started wondering where I belong, exactly.

I look forward to doing the course and seeing where that road of discovery takes me, and, in a similar way, I look forward to discovering the quilt that will emerge from my efforts this semester, before my life is, once again, taken over by that other kind of work, the one that gives me a living.

Adiós September

2010-09-30T20:16:00.011-05:00

Ten days ago, when September was already on its way out, my husband and I attended an Oldtime Farming Festival in the nearby town, which boasts its status as the geographical center of the state. I'd never been to a festival of this kind so I was ready for all the surprises, one of them being that everything at a farm festival tends to be oversize, including the huge pigs, pumpkins, dahlias and sunflower heads.

The one thing I wasn't ready for was watching tractors doing square dancing, complete with a tractor-driving guy in drag, and tractors fitted with pants and skirts.

Tractors there were for any taste and need, of all colors and makes and years.

But the draft horses were the most beautiful.

The most fun was watching the border collie demonstration as this very intense dog (reminded me of Lizzy) herded a gaggle of ornery geese around several obstacles and a bridge, and then did the same with a group of sheep. After that, it was on to the goat milk stand to have a taste, which was not bad!

As September ends and October arrives, there are no more farming festivals and the farmer's market will become more reduced to apples and pumpkins and other goodies of fall. I will miss the plentiful summer and now must look forward to next year's old and new farm festivals.

Seeing stars

2010-09-23T22:23:00.005-05:00

Today's project in quilting class was to make two "friendship stars," like the one above. I only got to make one so I'll have to make the other one here at home. These are quite challenging and the teacher had to rip and resew part of this one when one of my points came out a little crooked. I would've let it be, but she insisted that I should fix it (the idea is that if the blocks aren't symmetrical, then getting all the blocks lined up will be impossible).

By the end of class, I put a deposit to reserve a $180 quilting "kit" for the quilt below, called "American Beauty." My plan is to make this gorgeous quilt on my own (the kit has all the fabric and patterns that you need to make it). That will happen once I'm done with this class and a second beginner's class I plan to take next year to cement what I'm learning so far. Maybe making this quilt will be my major project next summer. I feel that if I can quilt a lovely bedspread like this one, then I'll know I've "arrived" where I want to be as a quilter.

That's a long way to go from four-pointed stars but, as my dissertation advisor used to tell me, "Aim for the stars," and that's what I'm doing. I'll pay for the kit in a few installments and by the time it's mine, maybe, just maybe, I can start on this beauty all by myself.

In the meantime, each time I sew on her old machine, I can feel my abuela's happiness.

Quilting imperfection

2010-09-22T20:50:00.006-05:00

Now that my abuela's last sewing machine, which she got sometime in the 1960s, is safe and sound with us after being shipped from Puerto Rico to Ohio, and now that it's finally all spruced up and boasting a new motor (the last one, as the sewing machine repairman said, looked like it had been struck by lighting!), I've started putting together what will be my second quilt ever. This one is just a wall hanging so I'm not in the Major Quilting Leagues yet, but I'll get there sometime, I'm sure.

For now, I've made space in my office for the sewing machine and its table, and for the ironing board, which I brought up from the laundry room (I use it to press the fabric pieces after their sewn together) and I've set up a cutting table on top of my husband's old desk in the upstairs loft area. To protect the old desk, my husband provided a large, flat piece of wood on top of which I put my cutting mat.

Tonight, as I started assembling the pieces that are finished to see what the quilt will look like, Hamlet and Darwin were keeping me company, while the dogs slept nearby on the floor.

After placing the sewn pieces on top of the cutting mat, the quilt is beginning to take shape and it looks promising, I think.

This is only the beginning, since the quilt will need its main background, the binding, the batting and then the quilting itself, so this is only the very beginning, but it gives me a sense of accomplishment to see that I am getting it done, slowly but surely. What I like about my quilting class this year, is that we have homework to do before class so we're forced to replicate what we learn without the benefit of having the teacher present. That will ensure that I can continue to quilt after this project is finished, something I didn't feel confident about two years ago when I took my first quilting class.

Still, I foresee taking other beginning quilting classes just so that I can memorize the techniques through lots of practice, which does, after all, make perfect. But I'm actually not hoping to get a perfect quilt. My "Zen" project for this quilt is to make it but not obsess about its perfection or about whether my seams are faultless and my corners flawless. I'm using the quilting process to try to cure myself a little of my perfectionism and just enjoy the process. What a concept!

Prelude to fall

2010-09-19T09:33:00.005-05:00

In these latitudes, fall officially begins this coming Wednesday, Sept. 22nd, when days and nights will be about equal in terms of length. Fall is supposed to last six weeks before the first frost. But, at the farmer's market, and in terms of nighttime falling temperatures, fall has already begun in earnest.

There's definitely a bittersweet feeling to purchasing butternut squash at the farmer's market, or a few of the many kinds of delicious apples that begin to show up in orchards in this season. There's also that same feeling when you have to shut all the windows at night and, when you awake, you find that the inside temperature barely reaches 66 degrees, making you wonder when you'll have to start turning on the heat as it begins to dip below 65 inside (usually when it's in the low 40s outside).

This has been, like 2008, a very dry summer, so the promise of the stunning fall colors of earlier years likely won't materialize. Still, the pumpkins are doing their best to make up for that (I brought home the homely, warty yellow, green and orange pear-shaped pumpkin above).

This fall, for the first time since we arrived in Ohio in 2001, when I was yet to figure out what I wanted to do, I'm not working full time or teaching, and the break is a welcomed one, even if it feels odd not to be as crazy-busy, not to be in constant communication with students and colleagues, or not getting all dressed up for work. That means I finally have time to dedicate myself not just to my scholarship but also to re-designing my classes for next semester and to making sure that I structure my time in ways that help me finally achieve some kind of balance between my commitment to my job and to myself.

With myself in mind, and thanks to the privilege of having this time off, I'm re-learning to quilt and am devoting time to going on at least two walks a day with the dogs, five or six days a week, aiming to get in the groove of the physical exercise that eluded me completely during the academic year. Since the days and evenings are still pleasant, I don't have to go to the gym to walk a mile or two. Soon that will change, of course, but for now, I'm making the most of these glorious late summer-early fall days.

The summer quilts have been put away and the comforters taken out, a sure sign that summer will soon be a warm (if too dry and hot) memory. But there is much to look forward to this fall: a visit from my sister and niece to see a musical here, a visit from my mom for my birthday, and a visit from my sister and her kids for Thanksgiving (finally I get to cook another scrumptious turkey with her!). Welcome fall!

Change

2010-09-11T21:19:00.005-05:00

There is a bittersweet flavor to the transition from summer to fall: the days get shorter, the days cooler, and the nights more pleasant, and apple season is upon us in earnest.

Our nearby orchard produces scrumptious apples, a little tart, which I prefer, and which make for perfect pies. Now that, thanks to The Joy of Cooking, I have finally figured out how to fully cook the bottom crust of my fruit pies and how to avoid having a soupy pie, baking end-of-summer-start-of-fall apple pies is a lot more fun. I'm just sorry that my dad, who loved my apple pie, didn't get to taste my perfected pièce-de-résistance above. He would have appreciated it very much.

In addition to the apple boom, fall weather brings outside fires, which my husband likes to build in the iron grate that we bought a year or so ago at a community flea market for all of 50 cents. There's plenty of small wood pieces strewn all over the yard to get the fire going and my husband keeps some of the firewood that we inherited from the previous owners of the house in our shed, to protect it from the elements. A lot of the firewood is decomposing at one side of the yard precisely because the former owners didn't protect it from rain, etc.

Inside the house, my husband has set up the sewing machine that I inherited from my abuela, her last Singer from the 1960s, in my office. I found a man who restores Singers in the nearby town and he gave it back to me almost unrecognizable in its improvement. I've started taking a beginning quilting class, which will meet for the next eight weeks, and I've started work on a small, quilted fall-inspired wall hanging (nothing fancy or ambitious). I've quilted once before, in 2008, but have basically forgotten it all and tonight had the hardest time trying to figure out how to get the bobbin to work with the needle of my abuela's machine!

Sun and moon

2010-09-06T08:22:00.004-05:00

On a recent evening, my husband suggested that we take a motorcycle ride to visit a nearby dam, where we had been before. I wasn't too happy with the idea, thinking it wouldn't be particularly fun since it wasn't a particularly special place. But, oh, how wrong I was.

When we arrived, the sun had begun its setting journey into the horizon and my husband was able to capture the picture above as a solitary fisherman came into the sun's path, shimmering on the golden water.

Rather poetically, and directly on the opposite side, the moon was already full and rising to claim domain over the darkening skies.

As we walked on the dam's edge, we came across an elderly couple, who told us that they often walk there because it's so beautiful. In their late 70s or early 80s, they were still holding hands and chatting with one another, making me wish that my husband and I will be like that, still friends and loving companions after so many, many years.

Sort of like the sun and the moon coinciding on a magical evening.

Late summer/early fall

2010-09-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

Even the road most traveled looks freshly new and inviting on such a glorious day.

Chiquita The Blur

2010-09-03T18:59:00.003-05:00

It's nice to end the week by spending time with "the kids" in the backyard. My husband throws Lizzy's favorite toy, a squeaky plastic doughnut, and she runs as fast as she can to get it and, after her, runs Chiquita, trying to catch up to her sister while yapping frantically.

My husband tried to capture the tiny Chihuahua in her run and got her airborne, in a blur, running like the wind after the bigger dog.

I have often said that dogs are great teachers, and ain't that the spirit to emulate? To believe in your heart you can accomplish something, even if there's no chance you can.

Bedfellows

2010-08-31T21:43:00.003-05:00

Lizzy's and Chiquita's adoptive sibling relationship didn't start well.

The first day Chiquita was in the house, she rushed to Lizzy's bowl at din-din time (Lizzy being served first because she is Top Dog) and was quickly nipped by the spaniel, a nip that would've been nothing to another dog but that left the then-2.2 lbs Chiquita a bit mauled, with tooth marks on her face and skull.

Chiquita thus learned not only to never rush Lizzy's bowl while Lizzy was eating but also to stay away from the larger dog (who pretty much outweighs her by 26 lbs). Recently, however, there have been small rapprochements as Lizzy tries to learn to play with Chiquita without stomping on her. And, tonight, they shared the dog bed for a little while.

That is progress, indeed! I think Lizzy is slowly realizing that her position as Top Dog isn't threatened by the Chihuahua, who today weighed 3.8 lbs at the vet's, where we went for her vaccinations.

As a mother who wants to see her furry children get along, the shared-bed moment was a small victory.

Charging windmills

2010-08-29T09:14:00.005-05:00

Sometimes, the monsters that assail us are more a creation of our own heads than actual ones. Chiquita's greatest foe? My foot, which she loves to bite.

Trailblazing

2010-08-27T22:03:00.002-05:00

You'd think that a dog that weighs 3.5 lbs would be terrified to walk and run on the trails that Lizzy and I like to walk on but you'd be wrong.

Chiquita loves our nearby trails and now that the horseflies have abated we took both dogs out last evening for a walk and to get a glimpse of the space station as the sun set and illuminated it hovering, like a slow-moving shooting star, on the darkening sky.

That was the first time, ever, that Chiquita was on the trails (she appears to have been rescued from an animal hoarder who kept her in a kennel) and instead of preferring to be carried she insisted on taking on the trails on her own, doing everything she could to keep up with her adoptive sister, who is much bigger and faster than she is.

Chiquita may be tiny but what she lacks in size she makes up in spirit and it's wonderful to see her, more and more, developing into a self-assured dog who thinks of herself as being bigger than she really is.

Sunflowers

2010-08-22T14:14:00.005-05:00

I simply adore sunflowers and these, brought to me yesterday by my erstwhile dissertation advisor, who came to dinner after a long-time-no-see, are simply breathtaking.

Like a sunflower in late summer's full bloom, life at my small college on the hill resumes this week with the start of a new academic year, but I am on a research leave this semester so I won't be walking into any classrooms to teach until after the new calendar year has begun.

I really appreciate the opportunity to be on leave, however difficult it is to persuade students that this time is not to be devoted to them but to figure out my place in the world now that my father isn't in it, and to finish what needs to get done to secure that my pre-tenure review goes smoothly next semester.

The ability to devote a largely uninterrupted semester to my scholarship is quite exciting and allows me to carefully develop a long-term plan, including more thoroughly sketching my plans for developing a book.

However, after beginning my prospectus and feeling tired after simply recounting what I've done during these past two years, I think the time is come for me to sit back a little and enjoy the work already accomplished rather than always feeding my ambitious and workaholic hungers. As Dr. S has said to me, in light of her own experience, the track for tenure is a marathon, not a sprint. For two years, I've been sprinting to stay ahead so now it's a good time to stay the course but maintain a saner pace.

"Why do you do all this?" Dr. S recently asked, encouraging me to think about the possible answers and to ponder their significance and impact on my life.

I've been considering the question and can honestly say that a part of my ambition is ingrained, something I learned from my parents, especially my father who, before falling ill, and despite being retired, always had one project or another in the works, be it a new book, an essay, a conference, a meeting, a class. Even at the end, after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he was thinking of a class he would've liked to design and had fully outlined what would have been a great book about his travels around the world as an electoral observer for the Carter Center in Atlanta.

Honestly, I don't know how to do nothing. I mean, I can lounge around with the best of them for a while, don't get me wrong. But I always have to have a mission, a project, something that makes me feel like I'm contributing to a larger cause.

That said, I'm not sure why I'm always trying to do more and more and more when enough is enough. That I'm still trying to figure out. I'm way past the time when I need to prove myself to anyone else so what it is, exactly, that drives me now?

"Driven," someone said when asked to describe me with a word, and I was shocked. And this was a few years ago, when I was still in graduate school. I am driven, and I am proud of it, but, as Dr. S has encouraged me to do, I want to figure out what am I driving to (other than the obvious achievement of tenure and recognition in my field) and why.

Most importantly, I want to answer my own question: "When will you know that you've arrived?"

A grandmother's gift

2010-08-20T10:18:00.006-05:00

This is the bedroom set that my grandmother left me and which we had to store in Puerto Rico for more than a year. We finally had it shipped to Ohio and it now graces the smaller guest bedroom of our house. She also gave me the bedspread, many years ago, and you can imagine the kind of woman she was when you see how white and pristine it still is!

The armoire was, by far, the heaviest item but once my husband took off the mirror doors he was able to bring it upstairs with a friend's help. The vanity also had a mirror but it was too old and stained to keep so my hubby is going to try to find a new one that fits the frame. I can remember vividly my grandmother sitting on the small stool (which also needs repaired because the lattice-like wooden slats on its seat are broken), applying make up or perfume. The vanity still has her sweet flowery smell.

This chest of drawers (notice how it still shines after more than 70 years!) has special significance, too. My grandfather, who died in the late 1970s, used to keep my favorite bubblegum in the top drawer, which he would give me as a sweet reward. I remember that I was too small to reach the drawer so the anticipation was always great as to what it contained. Of course, my grandfather is now gone and I can open the top drawer with no effort, but the lovely memories remain (and I swear I can still smell the bubblegum inside!).

Face off

2010-08-15T11:02:00.005-05:00

Among the funniest occurrences around here these days is when Chiquita and Hamlet face off in a mock battle to the death. Their leaps and bounds and their running around like wild horses are simply hilarious. A simple blessing of joy, indeed.

Comings and goings

2010-08-14T10:55:00.001-05:00

One of the highlights of summer is riding the motorcycle with my husband. We mostly like to visit peach and apple orchards, or go for ice cream at the nearby Velvet factory, or just go for long rides with no aim in mind, passing endless rows of corn.

Now that my husband has new saddlebags we've even gone to two department stores to get, first, a quilt and, later, a pillow, and been able to transport both back home.

As August reaches it mid point, the summer is inevitably moving toward its end but, thankfully, there's still plenty left to enjoy.

The ride so far

2010-08-12T12:45:00.002-05:00

My husband's book is now in print and available. For more information, go to http://www.theridesofar.com/

Woo hoo!!

Chiquita and Happy

2010-08-06T21:31:00.002-05:00

No words needed.

Sofrito

2010-07-31T09:15:00.001-05:00

A quick visit to the Farmer's Market this morning yielded beautiful sweet peppers (the large Cubannelles and the small ones that remind me of our ají dulce), flawless cilantro and tomatillos, which added to onions and garlic made for wonderfully aromatic sofrito.

There are many recipes for sofrito, a base we use in cooking almost anything, but especially beans and arroz guisado. My maternal grandmother was famous for her sofrito and while I have to do without recao* and ají dulce, I make do with other local ingredients (like cilantro and tomatillos) and the result is not as authentic but just as good for my purposes.

(*I just found a website that claims they will send you recao seeds so I might just try that...)

Oh, how do I love summer and all its cooking possibilities!

County fair finds

2010-07-29T20:54:00.004-05:00

A visit to the county fair is always a must in summer around here and this year was no exception. My husband and I met up with friends and their kids there. Our first stop, before we visited the farm animals, which we both like to see, was the old one-room country schoolhouse that they have on the premises as a small museum.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so the cellphone had to do the job. Still, I was glad to have at least a way to get the picture of the 1915 Rules for Teachers above, which are hilarious and disturbing all at once ("You may not dress in bright colors"!!??). I definitely would've been fired, if I'd been a teacher back then (for that and many other reasons probably!).

What teachers had to know before they were accepted into teaching, below, would have also sealed my doom, since there's a lot of that I don't know how to answer even today.

We then went on the look for the Día de los Muertos calavera that the daughter of a nurse I know here in town made for her 4H project. We figured it would be the only Latin@ artifact in the whole fair so it was worthwhile having to search from exhibit to exhibit until we did find it (too bad for the fuzzy picture). Good for her to have done such a great job!

We then moved on to the animal pens, first and foremost to the draft horses, which are glorious and I took that picture of the hoof prints on the concrete floor because the horses were in their shaded stalls and I couldn't get a good shot of them. We did see one horse that seemed unhappy to be penned and kept kicking his stall and ignoring his owner's shouts to stop, and two other horses who were tied next to each other and started bickering and one tried to kick the other one. Quite a lot of action for a small fair.

Finally, we met up with our friends and their kids, and after funnel cake and lemonade (they had pulled pork and my husband had a caramel apple) we went on to watch the Figure 8 Bus Racing, which was funny in a sort of disturbing way, especially given the very dark smoke emanating from the buses as they tried to outrun or collided into each other. "Has anyone heard of the environment?" I asked.

Then there were rides for the kids (I went with the girls to watch them go on Berry Go Round and the tiny fake helicopter rides) and a visit to the petting zoo where we saw and fed kangaroos, a fawn, a domesticated skunk (probably de-glanded), antelopes and goats.

Cotton candy to go and we were done with this year's fair. Next year, I will remember to bring my camera and will, hopefully, find even more things to record.

More Chiquita

2010-07-26T20:49:00.005-05:00

For her clamoring fans:

Chiquita sunbathing...

Chiquita and Lizzy reluctantly share the sofa...

Chiquita, The Couch Potato...

Chiquita's favorite spot

2010-07-21T16:31:00.001-05:00