Dear pen pal

To my great delight, Cady Gray has begun exchanging letters and little art projects with her old friend Soli. She probably doesn't remember Soli at all, but she's thrilled whenever something comes in the mail from her.

Cady Gray completed a "rainbow dolphin" of fuseable beads over the weekend, and then wrote a letter and drew two pictures of herself to send along with it. I managed to grab a scan of the letter before she stuffed it in the envelope. (The dolphin's color didn't scan accurately -- what looks gray is actually orange and pink.)



Dear Soli, This time I sent you a dolphin. My mom says it looks like a heat map. I just can't wait to see you this winter.

-- Cady Gray Murray

P.S. There's a picture in here.

To: My best friend,
Soli

Complicated isn't always good

I visited the library today to get a book I needed for next semester's syllabus, and while there I went to the well-stocked and well-curated children's area to see if I could pick up anything for the kids.

While looking for books about sports, to feed one of Archer's obsessions, my eye was caught by the bright colors and crinkly plastic jacket of A Book About Design by Mark Gonyea. Sometime last year I brought home its sequel, Another Book About Design, and Cady Gray and I had read through it.

This one focuses on the relationships between space, simple shapes, and color. While Noel fixed dinner, Cady Gray read it to me, howling with laughter at the pages that talked to her (sample: one page asks you to imagine two intersecting straight lines drawn through an empty square, and the next page shows the same square with the legend, "Take your time, I'll wait").

The book makes an interesting move from looking at how changing size, shape, balance, and relationships changes the overall perception of a graphic, to thinking about "importance" and how it's communicated through design. Where are your eyes drawn? What lets you know what part of the page to look at first? And if you tweak a texture over here, you have to rethink the whole thing -- because changing one thing changes everything.

I'm fascinated by design. Not being artistically inclined, I'm in awe of the way some people can see these things instinctively. And so I appreciate when someone takes the time to move the pieces around and talk about what happens.

Let me entertain you

My mother is a consummate entertainer. How many dinner parties did she hold around the big table in our special-occasions-only dining room? How many bridge nights did she host? How many nights did we kids eat at a card table set up in the den -- or on bar stools in the kitchen -- because both the dining room and the breakfast nook were occupied by my parents' friends?

I'm nowhere near that standard (as with most endeavors on which I can be compared with my mother). But I like the idea of having people over on occasion. Noel's parents are coming over for Thanksgiving, and while I have a lot of things to do between now and then -- like grading, teaching, and writing -- I'm already starting to plan the meal.

All I really have to plan is the turkey; it's my only responsibility. As the centerpiece of the meal, that means I'm the cornerstone of the entertainment edifice, or at least I flatter myself as such. Usually I'm at the American Academy of Religion meeting the week of Thanksgiving and only get home in time to thaw the turkey in the sink using the last-ditch change-the-water-every-30-minutes method. But because the conference was earlier this year, I got to move the turkey from the freezer to the fridge this morning and start dreaming about a platter garnished with apples, rosemary and sage.

I still crave the Thanksgivings of my childhood, as do we all. I want those side dishes -- my grandmother's stuffing, the pea and asparagus casserole, the apple and cranberry bake. But Noel and I put on a pretty good feed. And even though I'll never be half the hostess my mother is, I take pride in playing the part on rare occasions.

Power buy

It was a good shopping day. Longtime readers will know that I have a shopping problem. My intense buyer's remorse leads me to avoid making a decision, or even contemplating making a decision, until absolutely necessary. But sometimes, against all my expectations, shopping goes well.

The first part of the goodness I didn't even have to do myself. Noel and the kids came home from an extended trip to the grocery store with all the components of our Thankgiving feast. Bags of turkey, vegetables, garnishes, herbs, and pie. Unpacking the car, I began to anticipate the brining and the cooking and all the preparations. Thanksgiving joy arrived with those bags of food.

Tonight Noel and I had a babysitter, but no movies in town that we wanted to see. So Noel had the bright idea of going to the local huge furniture gallery after our dinner out to look for new family room seating and some storage. Our leather sectional is in bad shape and needs replacing, and we've been thinking about replacing it with two recliners and a loveseat. Our foyer also needs a console of some kind where we can store games.

I thought it was a fine way to spend time, but I didn't have high hopes of seeing what we needed. But it turned out there were a lot of pieces that would work for us. The salespeople were helpful but not pushy. The prices were right.

I started to envision sitting in the recliners watching basketball with friends on the loveseat. I saw the sideboard against that blank wall in our entryway, Sorry and Trivial Pursuit and cribbage stacked up behind its glass doors.

The money's not spent, the delivery's not arranged, the dinner's not made. But it feels like life is on the upswing. One more notch upward on the livability scale for our home. Eventually.

Game night

My lovely teaching assistant is throwing a party tonight for our freshman students -- pizza and games. When we asked in class what games, she threw out some choices -- Scene It, Cranium, and Telephone Pictionary.

A student immediately requested Scene It, which is a DVD game about identifying movies. I confidently replied that they don't want to be playing me in Scene It. Actually, I've never played the game, but you know, I've had a few more years on this earth to see movies compared to these 18-year-olds. Plus, movies are a part of my job, and a lot of my husband's job. I know something about movies.

I'm competitive. When I play games, I like to win; and if I can't win, I like to be in the game. In a way, playing a game like Scene It, where I'd be expected to do well, there's no way to come out on top. If I win, it's nothing special; if I don't, it's embarrassing. Really, the only way to have fun in that scenario is to stay out altogether.

One of my students told me that in her house, anybody with a negative attitude during a game has to wear "the bitter hat." Let me tell you, I'd be wearing the bitter hat much of the time. I tend to complain vocally about bad luck and to whine about being far behind. Of course, I also crow unmercifully when I'm ahead. In short, I'm probably not much fun around the card table.

Yet although I sometimes enter into games unwillingly -- because they represent a chance to lose, and not much to be gained -- I really enjoy competing. It's painful for me to stay out of a game. I'm lucky if I can find good partners and good sports to play with me. And I should remember to be thankful when they do -- especially if they come back for more.

Let the circle be unbroken

Last year a student came to me for help in forming a knitting club for the Honors College. This student, who happens to be from Japan, knew that a growing number of her peers were knitting and crocheting, and that many more were expressing interest in learning.

I thought it was a great idea -- what knitter wouldn't want a knitting circle started in her workplace? But something was standing in the way. It's just my own neurosis, I'm sure, but I couldn't start the group until we had a good name. Luckily a student suggested Knitwise. Perfect -- now we could move forward.

We've had a great semester in Knitwise. A number of people have stopped by to learn how to knit, and then become regulars at our Thursday afternoon meetings. I've seen students go from never having handled needles, to making useful (and beautiful) objects. I've seen students become almost as obsessed with knitting as I am. And other students have become the teachers and mentors of the group. Still others stop in from time to time to revive their skills or just socialize.

I have big plans for this group. I'd like to bring in guests for demonstrations; run workshops to teach techniques; work together on charity projects; introduce them to Ravelry. But all of that can wait. Right now we're all just plopping down on couches, talking yarn and needles and hooks, discussing projects, helping each other with finishing, complimenting progress, oohing and ahhing over the astonishing work we're producing. It's quite enough to share that with a few students, adding stitch by stitch to my own projects, and dreaming about the power of one crafter added to another and to another. About the circle creating, expanding, developing its own gravity, and spreading change one beautiful, functional, warm object at a time.

Found in translation

It's been a cold, wet week. My spirits haven't been at their highest; my energy level has taken a hit. But life got a little brighter when a friend pointed out that you can change Facebook's settings to communicate with you in "English (Pirate)."

Not everyone appreciates the delightful practice of sprinkling one's discourse with "scurvy dogs," "keelhaul the landlubber," and "by Davy Jones' locker." But someone at Facebook certainly does. Switch your language to piratical and your posts become your scribblin's, events become grog fests, and the help command becomes "Mayday!"

The transformation is disturbingly thorough. Instead of viewing pictures of yourself contributed by others, you "spy me bewitched portraits." I'm not married to Noel Murray, I'm anchored to him. Status updates are timestamped "12 shots of rum ago" or "'bout 5 turns o' t' hourglass ago" (and in my case, they're "fired from" Ping.fm). And instead of liking a posted item, you click "Arrr, this be pleasin' to me eye."

Best of all, the e-mails you get from "Ye olde Facebook" don't alert you to friend requests or comments on your status updates; they convey demands for you to be mateys and ask that you confirm that ye sailed with the potential hearty, and let you know that somebody flapped their gums about one o' your recent tales.

Even more than the inventiveness and comprehensiveness of the translation, I meditate on the creative labor involved. Somebody, or a few somebodies, channeled a heck of a lot of pirate in programming the makeover. It warms my cockles that such transcendently useless labor still has a place. Although I suppose it's not surprising that the place is Facebook.

Whistle while you work

My office can only be entered by going through a main reception area and a small work/copy room. In a way, my office is part of the main office for my department. It doesn't have a separate door that opens onto a hallway.

That may be why I rarely play music while I work. If I'm in the office on a holiday or when there are very few other people around, I'll fire up the iPod on the computer speakers. If I need to watch a YouTube video, I'll stick headphones into the computer. But generally I work in silence. It rarely occurs to me to listen to music. I work with one ear cocked to the murmur of conversation outside my door, from staff to students to other faculty coming in and out, faxing things, using the copier, asking questions, getting their mail.

There's something private -- or maybe the word is "indulgent" -- about having a soundtrack for one's work. In an office setting, knocking on the door or walking into the room and having to pause while the person turns down the volume or takes out the earbuds, gives me the feeling of having intruded on a personal moment.

Worse, though, is being intruded upon. Invariably when I've put my earbuds on to listen to a podcast or hear the sound to a video, someone pokes their head through my door and asks me a question. Sitting with my back to them, facing the computer screen, it's not immediately obvious to my visitor that I'm in a different sonic landscape. I have to click pause and pull out the earbuds before turning around to ask them to repeat themselves, a process that takes a few seconds. In that time it's become clear that they've mistaken my availability, and there's an embarrassed moment as they apologize, and as I assume the attitude that I was perfectly justified to be watching that Lady Gaga video. (Seriously, it was for a discussion about Nietzsche.)

My work soundtrack is work itself, and that sets me apart, I imagine, from my A.V. Club colleagues. What about you?

There's a chill

This morning when I awoke, the temperature was sixty degrees. It was spitting rain, so Archer's running club was canceled. By noon a chilly wind was forcing everyone to clasp their jackets tight across their bodies.

A cold front rolled through during the day. One of Cady Gray's teachers observed, to her amusement, that it was fall in the morning and winter in the afternoon. (I had to explain to her that she didn't mean it literally.)

Even when the seasons change as gradually as they possibly can, there's always a moment where it happens far too suddenly, and you aren't ready. I had my warmest, softest sweater, but I was wishing for a hat and scarf. The gray skies and persistent mist made me feel even colder, and I cursed the crisp fall weather than seemed to have deserted me without warning.

The sudden cold has its good side, though. All at once you're reminded of how wonderful it is to walk into a warm house, or to feel the heat starting to seep up from the floorboards of a car. I had moments today when I fantasized about starting up the fireplace. But then again, I was reminded that the last time we had a fire going it, it was because the heater had conked out. Time to call the man so that I won't have to wear those warm sweaters indoors this season.

By any other name

Every few days, I spend half an hour or so welcoming newcomers to Ravelry. I've been a volunteer on the Ravelry Welcome Wagon for almost two years. The job involves sending personalized messages to everyone who has joined the site in the last few days -- in my case, everyone who chose a username beginning with G. (That's how the Wagoneers divide up labor.)

As I go through the list, I type a lot of names into my personalized message. And it's interesting what people choose to represent themselves. Since I welcome the G names, I see a lot of variations on Grandma (g-ma, granny, gran, etc.), often with a name or a number of grandchildren attached. I see many usernames that start with "girl" or "grrl."

Names run in cycles, of course. Not many people my age and younger have my name; it seems to have been popular in the generation just previous to mine. I watch popular names come and go as cohorts of students arrive in my classes. Monica was popular eighteen years ago, and Ashley has been big for half a decade now.

My name is dear to me because it's based on my father's name. I use some form of it as my username on most sites -- but not on Ravelry. When I got my invitation (you needed one back then), I spent several agonizing minutes trying to figure out the perfect username to present myself to my fellow knitters. I finally settled on my favorite fictional character. And I've tremendously enjoyed answering to that name.

What name would you choose if you could? What name do you choose when you have the chance?

Under the weather

I've been vaguely sick ever since I got back from Washington, D.C. It's just a cold, and not even a bad one at that. But it just keeps moving around, from the top of my head at first, now to just inside my throat.

When I have a cold, I get really, really hungry. I feel like eating all the time, and the only thing that makes me feel halfway normal is if I'm full. Not surprisingly, I get tired easily, and want to curl up in bed for long hours. And nothing feels better than a hot shower.

Thankfully, I haven't been so uncomfortable that it's stopped me for a second doing what my work, either here or away. But that in itself has worn me down. I'm ready for some down time. Yet I spent the day on stage, teaching my part-time Methodist pastors. It was wonderful, but I'm exhausted. My energy is drained.

It would be nice to have a sick day -- a "bed day," we call them in this house. If my throat and head feel any worse, I might find a way to take one. It's been ages since I've canceled class because of illness; I just don't get sick that often. But is that a license to take a mental health day when I don't absolutely have to? Additionally, Noel has been on point for more than two weeks, taking care of kids and home while I've flown around North America. He deserves a vacation more than I do.

But you can't always control where your stress comes from. I've enjoyed myself tremendously over the last few weeks, but it's as if I've had no days off; every day has been work. Yes, you could look at what I've done and argue that it shouldn't have taken so much out of me, but the fact is, I'm run down. How much relaxation and recuperation can I build into the next few weeks -- the last of the semester, and the beginning of the holidays?

True love

I brought Cady Gray a present from my Montreal trip -- a plush Quatchi, the sasquatch in the trio of mascots for the Vancouver Olympics.



As is her wont when presented with new stuffed animals, Cady Gray loved Quatchi immediately. She embraced him, presented him to her dad, and professed her desire to sleep with him always "because I only sleep with my best friends."

Today she took Quatchi to school for show-and-tell. If I gather correctly, she mentioned that he is from "Vancouver Olympics 2010," that he's a sasquatch wearing earmuffs, and that her mom brought him home from Canada.

But love is pleasure mixed with pain, as we all know. There came the inevitable evening, the night after Cady Gray and Quatchi first met, when the little girl came padding out of her bedroom half an hour after lights out. She hesitated before telling us what she wanted; "Just say it," her dad urged. Her face crumpled in on itself and her voice rose to a wail: "I can't FIND QUATCHI!"

We immediately comforted her and located her little friend kicked under the bed. But even if he'd been gone forever, better to have loved and lost a sasquatch than never to have loved a sasquatch at all.

I'll take the bus this time

Tonight I shepherded twenty students down to Little Rock to attend a lecture by Joel Salatin, renegade farmer. The lecture was plenty entertaining, and the students were enthusiastic. But riding back on the bus in the dark, all I could think about was the feeling of the many bus rides I took when I was their age and younger.

The rattle and the darkness, the roar of the engine, took me back immediately to bus trips like the ones I took during winter break with the fellow members of my high school glee club. Driving through the long dark evenings from stop to stop, sitting with my best friends, listening to my Walkman, and staring out at the night ... it's an indelible feeling of being alone with my thoughts.

I've always been able to hypnotize myself by unfocusing my eyes and letting the moving scenery outside a car window blur into impressionist colors. At night, though, I follow lights, idly wondering what they are or making tentative identifications. Meditating on the moment's emotions, I feel like a teenager again, the owner of a rich inner life unknown to those whose cars and houses, twinkling with light, I pass.

It's a strange feeling to return to that immature -- yet deeply felt -- stage. I'm reminded that having a rich inner life is also about doubting yourself, not knowing who you are. But retreating into reverie while riding through the night is a pleasant fantasy, an escape to a time at once simpler and much more complicated.

Real life

The A.V. Club's best of the decade coverage kicks off this week with television lists spearheaded by my very own husband. I contributed to some of the lists, but not the one on reality shows that Noel produced solo, running today.

The comments on this list have been particularly interesting. Earlier lists focused on miniseries and late-night television, but the reality show list has provoked protests that reality television is not worthy of critical attention or celebration.

Reality television is truly the genre of the decade, and yes, there's a case to be made that it's the scourge of the medium as well. But are we still so bitter about the decline of scripted television that we can't recognize some of the more interesting, creative, and even compelling reality series? I find myself talking to many of my colleagues and other educated people about popular culture, and among those who admit to watching television, most express great surprise that I would enjoy Top Chef or The Amazing Race.

The opposite is true among professional TV watchers, who recognize these shows as the class of the genre. Even some of them, though, scorn the talent competitions and offbeat follow-people-around shows as unworthy of consideration.

Me, I'll take drama, comedy, pathos, and entertainment where I can find it, and even though reality television has a tendency toward manufacturing all those elements when they're not actually happening in front of the camera, that doesn't mean that nothing of interest happens on those shows. To the contrary, I enjoy cheering for actual competent people doing things that I can't do (as on the cooking and fashion designing shows, for example), and I enjoy gasping at the machinations of people scheming to be the last ones standing on the Survivor-type shows. Yes, I'm as disgusted as anyone by the whoring-after-fame that proliferates among the would-be celebrities that apply for some of the shows, both reputable and sleazy. But as Noel points out in his piece, many of these shows represent the last vestige of a mass medium that actually unites us as a contrary, something everyone has an opinion on, weekly events that leave you out of the water-cooler conversation if you choose to forgo them. And it's hard to overestimate the power of that possibility in an increasingly fractured media landscape.