Our Own Mr. Bundy

He might be married, with children, but our Mr. Bundy, DSU's Director of Student Development, didn't talk about being a good spouse or parent today in his convocation speech at DSU. Rather, he discussed how technology and attitude can make a significant difference in a person's life. He developed his presentation with references to his own experiences in this regard, primarily about how the obstacle of his sightlessness has been addressed by technology and how he has made use of it. He also told a story about a defining moment in his life came about, as he realized he had to choose between taking charge of his life or letting things be done for him. He chose to stand and wipe his tears away, venturing out into the unknown as he took on the challenge of making his life what he wanted it to be. Laced with humor and pathos, the address brought the audience to its feet. The speech is available here. Thanks, Keith.

Coming Up!

Tomorrow we're hosting a little get-together for English majors and faculty, and I hope things keep the right balance between raucous and genteel, rowdy and urbane. Somewhere in the middle is best for me. Look for pictures here tomorrow or soon after.

I've also got some other things going on. DSU, lead by our own Dan Weinstein, is hosting the GPACW Conference on November 8 and 9, where I'll be presenting at with my international fellow-traveler TQ, who will arrive from the frozen north. We'll be talking about how we use Web 2.0 technology to help students with bibliographies and gathering information. Come and join us!

I'll be doing a solo thing on October 27 down at USD for the John R. Milton Conference "East Meets (the American) West," where I'll talk about the research I'm doing on electronic games and Native Americans.

Also, I just sent off a proposal for the symposium on "Death, Murder, and Mayhem: Healing and Violence on the Great Plains" in Lincoln, Nebraska, in April. I hope they let me come down there.

Finally, I've gotten some funding from DSU's own Center for Excellence for work on my Native American and games research. Cool.

An Attraction to the Old and Broken

Some people like new things, the flashy and shiny and fresh-out-of-the-box, things that work like they're supposed to, with warranties in case they don't and repair shops and experts that stand by the ready if the gadget doesn't gadge or the do-dad doesn't do. But I'm one of those whose attention is drawn to the car back in the tree row, the one with its tires flat and its hood missing, with torn seats and rusted floorboards. My ownership of cars includes a list of these sad-sacks, a 1959 Chevy with a bad fuel pump, a 1957 Chevy pickup piled with trash when I found it, a 1980 BMW that sat on the back lot of the Big Lot in Fargo until my son and I came along to fund its revival. Motorcycles too, like the Honda SL 100 that appeared to me at a garage sale; all it needed was the engine unstuck and worked over, same for the Yamaha Jazz that the kids enjoyed, and the Honda XL 350 I salvaged from the ravages of flood waters. Then there was the trio of Honda 350's I bought at a garage sale for 25 bucks, one of which actually ran some time later. I've had my fling at restoring dead vehicles to life.

So it's no surprise that down at the local flea market, a 1957 Mobylette keeps attracting my attention. It's not the zippy sort of scooter you see so often these days, requiring, as you see in the photo, a readiness to actually pedal the machine to life. The French have a different take on things, and it could look good, as you can see here. But I do hear it calling my name; after all, it's a long ways from home and could use a friend.

A Spot on the Radio

Yours truly recently had a moment on the state public radio station's program Food for Thought, discussing with Julia Monczunski Ivan Doig's book The Whistling Season, a book I led discussion of here in Madison. I was part of a program that included poet Andy Thorstensen and SD Humanities Council chair Fee Jacobson. Hear the program by following this link.

The Work, the Work, the Working Life

Springsteen chronicles the working life, but it's something a little less metropolitan and even less industrial that I have in mind, as I describe the work I did today, getting rid of the last remnants of the old willow tree and making some long-delayed progress on the "beverage room" in the new house. Compare, if you will, the previous photo of the fallen willow, with the one here, where little remains, the area marked by the lack of grass alone. In my second photo, a happy clown marks the spot where a tiny lilac bush had already volunteered to replace the fading willow.

Meanwhile, it appeared that some volunteer lilac bushes were appearing in the rose gardens, so those volunteers have been recruited for service along the perimeter between us and the house to the west. As I write, those volunteers are being supplied with ample water supplies, along with the nourishment I supplied.

Secondly, the second and third photos show the room that's been under construction since almost the first day we arrived, and now the nail holes are full and the whole has been primed for a new paint, texture, or whatever remains for it. On Wednesday, English majors from DSU will arrive and have a chance to look things over, so they'll see some work done, not knowing what things looked like when we arrived. They'll look better yet, as texture and paint awaits.

A Leaf in Suspension

Walking out to the mailbox this morning, I spotted this leaf caught in the act of falling. I'm sure the wind will soon finish the job, but for now the leaf appears to be arrested in its fall. It reminded me of the e.e. cummings poem about a leaf falling.

Someone Knew, and Said So

Here is an audio recording of some prescient students making their predictions for their teacher's marathon attempt. Courtesy of DW.

Recovering, Moving Forward

The wife and I went for a short recovery run on Monday and met our two Chinese guests of DSU out at Lake Herman, Fan Tang, at left, and Bei Zhao on the right. I was feeling pretty stiff, but I managed to make it the 2.5 miles around the loop. By today I'm feeling much better.

Last night we had the biggest group yet in our new house, folks who were there for a Pampered Chef party. People left happy, I think (though I removed myself for most of the evening in my office upstairs), and full, with the expectation of their fine new cooking utensils on their way.

It Could Have Been Worse

After finishing the Twin Cities Marathon, I called my mother in law, who was worried that I might keel over and croak on the marathon course, and told her she could postpone my funeral, but the second half of the race was so tough for me that a quiet ceremony in a cool parlor might have been a good idea. It was hot out there, and humid, but like most people who entered, I managed to get to the finish line (with a little hustle in the home stretch to beat some big guy who seemed to have been air-lifted in just to taunt me in my last 100 meters).

As I mentioned before, I was hoping for a Boston Marathon qualifying time (3:35), which might have been possible in good weather, and I was on pace for it with a 1:45 first half (about 8-minute miles), but then things started to unravel as the heat seemed to press in. The second half , which included a lot of walking, was 20 minutes slower for a finish of 3:55:48 (chip time). Anyway, it was a little disappointing, even though it was clear days before that a good race was not in the cards. I've only run one marathon slower, and that was one with my old running partner Mark F., who was running the Omaha Marathon with little training, and I stuck with him, also running a little thin on training.

Still, it went okay, and I got to see Laura Carrow, a graduate from DSU with an English degree and a good runner who in her senior year here was a speed demon. Having her spot me in the line for the porta-potties before the race helped make up for the half-hour wait. My daughter April, her guy Chester, and the wife showed up at points throughout the course to urge me on, and we had some fun with that, and the weekend included going to a movie with my son Casey.

Plus, the marathon didn't fare as badly as the one in Chicago yesterday, where it was 87 degrees and they called off the race about three and a half hours in after people were "falling all over the city" according to the Chicago Sun-Times article.

So what now? I'm thinking about another marathon this fall, maybe the one in November in Overland Park.

It's TCM Day

Today's the day. We'll soon take off for the Metrodome, where the Twin Cities Marathon begins on a day that is a fall treasure if you're not planning to run 26.2 miles. It's supposed to be 80 degrees today and is already 74 at 6:30 in the morning. The race starts at 8:00, and by 11:35 I hope to be done.

Inside the Willow Tree

You might be surprised at what you'd find inside an old willow tree that finally gives up, one day in the wind, when the only branches it has left collapse into the rose bushes, like an old man who lays down one last time to take a whiff of the roses before he dies. It was a good smell, I noticed, as I cut away the branches, lopped the trunk into sections I could handle with the wheel barrow. There was mint in the garden, a smell of fresh soil like a new grave. I draped the willow branches over the pickup truck until it looked like a haystack had fallen into the bed. I looked at the trunk still standing and it too looked weary enough to fall, so I leaned into it hard until it moaned, and I leaned again, and one more time I leaned and it let out a kind of whoosh as it fell and the rotten center scattered, the pieces full of holes the bugs had made. Soft inside like a soggy tree-bed, it wasn't a tree at all, it seemed, but a standing sponge with bark on it, its center gone and filled with what seemed to be the richest soil on earth. I thought of Queequeg reaching into the head of the whale for its ambergris as I lifted handfuls out and tossed them to the roses. My back sore and enough of the tree gone so I could quit, I returned to take these pictures as the setting sun lit the lilacs, now on their last legs of the year.

Willow Falls

We've been wondering what to call our big new house, and we've been using the name August House, since we moved in here in August and we kind of like the sound of it, but today the wind came up and made me wonder whether a new name was in order--Willow Falls.

The big willow tree in the back yard, an old timer more than a yard across, went down today, probably when the big wind came up over noon hour and switched directions. But it could have been any time, and it was due. The wife wasn't expecting anything like this when she arrived home this afternoon, and she called me to tell me the news. When I got home it was just as you see it here, keeled over and fallen into the rose bushes. That's how things lie in the back yard. I'll probably cut most of it out of there tomorrow.

The poor old thing didn't have much going for it any more. The wood the fall exposed was soft as sponges, and only about six inches of the trunk appears to have been alive. When I haul things out of there tomorrow, much of it just as well be hauled off with a scoop shovel it's so soft. But still heavy. I'm glad it didn't fall the other way.

I write this now at the end of the Ken Burns series on The War, on PBS. We watched much of it, though other things lie pressing for attention. The last episode saw the end come for the Germans and the Japanese armies both. Like the wind in our our tree, the impact of war had eaten away the strength of the two opposing armies, and there was nothing much left standing, so when the armies came pressing in, at some point the whole thing came down and brought an end to conflict.

Aiming Again for the Indian in the Console

I'm committed again to posting to my research blog, now linked from these pages, where I pursue a long-term project on examining Native American imagery in computer and video games.

If you have any tips on the presence of such items in games that you play, especially new ones, please drop me a line!

A Car in the Garage, a Pumpkin on the Step

It's been another busy few days, with a birthday celebration, a ride in a parade, visits from far-off friends, and some good work in the garage. Wednesday saw a good meeting with fellow English faculty members about revising our program. Thursday we kept busy and were rewarded that afternoon with good baguettes and bread at the farmer's market. Friday saw the Scholarship Car Show come and go on the day that my students and I discussed the play Medea and then finalized papers and turned them in. Friday night we tried out the new Stadium Sports Grill downtown and met here for some camaraderie and cake to mark CB's big birthday (flames and all) until we all grew weary and called it a night, including TQ and LB, who were our third guests to use the cool bedroom with the bay windows.

TQ rose early the next morning to let little Walter do his business, which left me later to assume he had NOT been out, so I left him some privacy as usual and made coffee, but when I returned he was no where to be seen. I looked high and (mostly) low, but no little W appeared. On a windy morning like that, the knucklehead's pitiful sensibilities are rendered entirely inoperable, so, the wife and I hopped in separate vehicles and went on the chase, leaving our guests to wonder what had become of us. The little guy was sighted trotting down a sidewalk several blocks away. He surrendered himself without incident.

We returned to find LB decked out in her fine livery, prepared for a parade walk/drill with carts, librarians showing they knew how to make use of a red carpet, the theme of the homecoming parade that LB and I (and TQ later too, it turned out) were a part of. I joined my fellow faculty officers and the VP, and we kept one eye on the sky, one on the crowd, and our hands turning (wrist-wrist-elbow-elbow) as we made our way down the parade route, greeting faces known and unknown and smiling to kids who were looking rather for candy. One treat was seeing the Howard band, featuring a young lady on snare drums doing some nearly wild shit.

Once finished with the parade, a few of us made our way to our Mexican restaurant and then back to the house, where our guests had conked out for a nap. The wife and I relaxed a while and then realized we'd missed the football game (which we WON, by the way, leaving the Trojans 3-1 on the season), visiting with our awakened guests until late in the afternoon. They left with some nice apples picked from the trees, which I hope they enjoy.

We drove around a bit then and got some pumpkins for the step, two bucks a pop for some nice pumpkins. Saturday night I spent mostly out in the garage, dismantling some old bookshelves and arranging things so I could get a car in there. Once I pulled the car in I figured I'd accomplished something. In the meantime, one of the wife's buddies stopped by with her three kids and they looked the place over.

Sunday has been fairly quiet, with a trip to Howard, a short visit over coffee, a stop on the way back for some more pumpkins and gourds, and a dinner at the sports grill again, with a pause at the flea market for some shopping. Doesn't it start to sound like a busy day? It wasn't. We relaxed some, enjoyed some apple crisp and a little TV, and found some time to work in the evening. Tomorrow it's Monday and a new week.

Six more days to the marathon, in its own way a kind of parade in itself.

My How the Days Go By

Whew! Funny how a week goes by like a little bug zipping past as you zing down the road on a motorcycle. So it went. It kind of got packed with goings-on, with work on the house, apple-picking, entertaining guests, and of course, a bit of The War, which I couldn't resist. Last Tuesday I led a good discussion of Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season down at the Madison Public Library, and on Thursday I read a few poems to accompany JB's skilled reading of a story about a painter/farmer, both of us attempting to warm up the crowd for Brian Bedard's reading of two stories, a new one and one from his collection Grieving on the Run, published by Snake Nation Press. He had everyone laughing and enjoying his stories before the night was through. Friday evening the wife and I hustled to make the house nice for guests, then went to friends to help select good coffees for an upcoming coffee kiosk in Madison. That was a treat. Then my daughter, her charming fellow, and my youngest son showed up and got their first look at the big new place. We had a good Saturday, hanging out, trying out the pellet gun, picking up apple crud, picking good apples, and getting the big bookshelves into the second floor office. We took the kids out for a meal at our dandy new El Vaquero Mexican restaurant. Saturday night we hosted family members and roasted marshmallows, grilled burgers and brats, and played croquet. Sunday I got my last long run (2 hours, 36 minutes) in for the marathon, and we had a good brunch before they had to dive into the Contour for their long drive back to the cities. It was a dandy weekend, but something got to us Sunday and the wife and I were both under the weather yesterday. Today, so far, is better.

Bicycle Attacks Boy

So, I'm getting into my pickup, I've forgotten my power supply in the lab and hustled up to the school to find the lab locked and the whereabouts of that key gadget in doubt, and I begin to pull away from the curb when a cry goes out "Help! Haaaaalp!" but I don't see where it's coming from until I look over and this kid, a little blond boy about eight is yelling "HAAAALP!" at the top of his lungs like he's about to be eaten by crocodiles and I think maybe he's got a broken leg or something because he's lying there on his back on the sidewalk with a bike between his legs, so I stop the pickup and leap out, leaving my pickup in the street and asking him, "You okay?" while two other boys cruise up nonchalantly on their bikes paying him little heed, and the dying kid says nothing, thinking maybe I'm going to nab him maybe and/or his bike and fling both of them into the bed of the truck and zoom off while mother and dad begin to wonder, but I look him over thinking maybe his pant leg is stuck in the chain, but it's not his pants, it's his freakin' shoelace wrapped around the pedal, so I say, "Take off your shoe," which is easy enough since it's untied, and he says, "I didn't want to tie my shoe," and he slips it off and I whip it round and round unwinding the shoelace and hand him his shoe again and say, "Tuck your shoelaces into your shoe if you don't want to tie them." That's what I do. He's putting his shoe back on when I drive away.

Now More News--Free!

Since The New York Times came on to the web scene years ago, I've been a fan. Me, a guy who's been to the big apple only once for eight hours. Nonetheless, I loved the site. It was great writing, easily accessible, and timely. I was disappointed when they put some of their material behind a wall about two years ago and required payment for some of their premium writers. They apparently made some money at it, but they figure they'll make even more by offering all their content for free. Cool! No more scrambling to the library to find those articles I want!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

At the start of every marathon there's a surge when people finally have a chance to put into motion what they have spent months preparing for. It's those experienced ones who know that the adrenaline that comes when they fire the starting gun can be a killer. Take off like a shot and zip through the first four miles, and you're facing a last six miles that will make you weep. I hope our start on the house isn't a similar situation. We're off to a fast start, but I think we'll enjoy it all the more having some of these things done. What we’ve done so far.

Since moving into our house we’ve been busy not only with entertaining and providing tours for curious friends, we’ve been making improvements.

· Removed the cabinets, wallpaper, crown molding, and ceiling tiles from the parlor. That room is a little rough right now. We’re working on redoing the ceiling so there’s no need to cover it. Carpet will have to be pieced in. Right now this all doesn’t really count as an “improvement,” but it's a step in the right direction.
· Removed the wallpaper from the dining room and repainted it, covering up the flowered wallpaper.
· Trimmed the bushes along the east side of the house and removed saplings (and some small trees) growing among them.
· Painted the north wall in the dining room where the wallpaper is covering some paneling that was put in when the fireplace was installed.
· Cleaned up and removed some of the dead wood in among the lilac bushes to the north.
· Replaced the toilet seats!
· Repaired and replaced the kitchen sink drain pipes.

We’ll continue to try to make progress. The mother-in-law has been a wizard in painting and stripping wallpaper, sometimes when we have been at work.

We’ll continue to try to make progress. The mother-in-law has been a wizard in painting and stripping wallpaper, sometimes when we have been at work. It’s good to have people helping.

We have also enjoyed the fruits of the former owners, especially those in the yard:

· Tomatoes
· Apples
· Roses
· Zinnias
· Hydrangeas

Come spring we’ll have lilacs, peonies, and other blossoms.

I’ve been looking over wood stoves that might go in the house and make a bigger contribution to the heat than the fireplace would. So far so good. We weathered some wicked rains when we first moved in, but nothing was damaged, and the rain stayed outside where it belonged (mostly).

Morning's Minion

Expecting to find the news of the day in the newspaper box, courtesy of the Argus Leader, I found instead this view of the sky above our address, the sunlight frosting the wisps of clouds that would soon disappear with the sunrise. I'll call for the paper, but I'm duly reminded that what I find in those pages isn't anything compared to the turning of the earth, the daily miracle in the dawn.

Payback, Concrete Style

The sister-in-law and her husband were our best helpers when we moved, and what comes around goes around (at least I try to make it that way), so I tooled over to their place in the country on my motorcycle and helped lay and stamp the concrete patio they were putting on. It's a beauty, much unlike the crew that put it up. We were an ugly sight, but after a shower things are better, and they've got a dandy place to roast marshmallows.