To Do

So summer is upon us. I submitted my final grades for the spring semester last week and they have been posted to the web. How do I know? Just this morning I got an email from a student huffily asking if we can meet to discuss her grade. She missed something like two weeks of class within the first month of class and I pulled her aside and let her know it would be very difficult for her to get a passing grade with a start like that. I practically begged her to withdraw and start fresh next semester. Nobody wants to spend the rest of their academic life with a bad grade hung round their neck, you know? She felt like I was throwing down the gauntlet and challenging her to do better. I wasn't but that's how she felt, so she hobbled through the rest of the semester, still missing classes here and there, coming in late regularly, missing small assignments, not following directions, etc. So she ended up with a D and now can't fathom how that happened. How do I know it's summer? The smell of unjustified indignation is in the air.

Anyway, I'm teaching two summer courses starting next week and hoping to get some movement on my dissertation prospectus. (I send off a draft on April 1st and have yet to hear back from my chair. I'm not waiting around though - emails and phone calls are going to hound this guy until I hear back.) But besides the work stuff, I have another to-do list - good things, fun things, live-it-up-while-the-days-are-long-and-the-work-hours-are-short things. This list includes:

See a drive-in movie. Apparently, this summer marks the 75th anniversary of the advent of drive-in movies. We have one up near Sandwich, IL and I think it would be fun to take the girls and see something family friendly. I have memories of the one in Rexburg - friends hiding under the seats and under blankets in the family van so we didn't have to pay their admission, the low cinder block building at the back of the vast parking lot that smelled like popcorn and liquid nacho cheese, all the people with their whole families spread out in folding chairs and on blankets, etc. A movie at the drive-in was unique - still an event like going to the theater but with a twist of chaos thrown in. The unpredictability of the weather, of other people parked in their cars rather than politely herded into theater seats - it was exciting.

Visit at least one Sandwich King restaurant. Sandwich King, as most of you know, is a show on the Food Network that features moon-faced Jeff Mauro, last year's Next Food Network Star winner, making sandwiches of all shapes and sorts in his kitchen in Chicago, IL. Every episode begins with him visiting some area restaurant, talking to the cook/chef, getting ideas, and then returning to make his own versions of what he found. I know it's probably just the magic (read: manipulation) of TV but the show makes even the most dive-ish place look fantastic. Suzy and I have a list of places featured on the show where we. must. eat! One of the other items on our list is to take the train into Chicago but that will have to be a different trip because we are going to need wheels to get to one of these joints.

Tour Robie House. This is another Chicago-centric trip. I've been a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture since I was a kid and visiting his Arizona compound last year was just a huge thrill for me. Illinois is lousy with FLW houses, the Robie House being one of the most fascinating. This won't be a trip to take Parker on but the older two, I think, would like it. Maryn actually read a YA mystery novel called The Wright Three that was set in the Robie House and had the premise that FLW left clues and codes in his designs to some great mystery. I think she and Ave would like walking through it with me. I hope we find the time.

Ann Patchett @ Anderson's Bookstore. I mentioned that I read several of Ann Patchett's books here a month or two ago. She'll be in Naperville next month on her tour for her acclaimed book State of Wonder. I love author readings. I find it fascinating to see what writers are really like up close, to hear stories of their everyday life, to hear the way they read their own words, etc. Sometimes they're awful and sometimes they are transcendent. I'm hoping for the latter.

Letterboxing. It's like nerdy treasure hunting, a lower tech version of geocaching. You get maps and directions online and then use basic orienteering skills to find little Tupperware boxes hidden in unlikely places. The boxes usually feature some kind of log for you to register your find and a rubber stamp for you to put in your own little notebook. Each letterboxer or letterboxing team has their own stamp and that's how they leave their mark in the logbook. Maryn and I tried it for the first time on vacation last summer. We tracked down our first box in a big, hilly cemetery in South Haven, Michigan and it was weirdly satisfying - following the clues, looking for landmarks, etc. There are a fair number of boxes in our area and we've searched out a couple since the weather warmed up - but there are none in Tonica. So our goal is to create and add some boxes in our little town so it registers on the letterboxing map online. Should be fun.

Anyway, I do hope to blog more regularly this summer. It's been a bit of a dry spell recently and I appreciate the fact that you are back to read this. I'll try to make something interesting to read a little more often. Good luck with your own summer to-do lists.

Poem for the Day

I'm not usually much of a Dana Gioia fan but I liked this one:

Finding a Box of Family Letters
 
The dead say little in their letters
they haven't said before.
We find no secrets, and yet
how different every sentence sounds
heard across the years.
 
My father breaks my heart
simply by being so young and handsome.
He's half my age, with jet-black hair.
Look at him in his navy uniform
grinning beside his dive-bomber.
 
Come back, Dad! I want to shout.
He says he misses all of us
(though I haven't yet been born).
He writes from places I never knew he saw,
and everyone he mentions now is dead.
 
There is a large, long photograph
curled like a diploma--a banquet sixty years ago.
My parents sit uncomfortably
among tables of dark-suited strangers.
The mildewed paper reeks of regret.
 
I wonder what song the band was playing,
just out of frame, as the photographer
arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?
Get out there on the floor and dance!
You don't have forever.
 
What does it cost to send a postcard
to the underworld? I'll buy
a penny stamp from World War II
and mail it downtown at the old post office
just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.
 
Surely the ghost of some postal worker
still makes his nightly rounds, his routine
too tedious for him to notice when it ended.
He works so slowly he moves back in time
carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.
 
It's silly to get sentimental.
The dead have moved on. So should we.
But isn't it equally simpleminded to miss
the special expertise of the departed
in clarifying our long-term plans?
 
They never let us forget that the line
between them and us is only temporary.
Get out there and dance! the letters shout
adding, Love always. Can't wait to get home!
And soon we will be. See you there.

by Dana Gioia