Comma Dot Comma

This is the final part in a five-part series. Here’s the rest: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

Finally the sky turned gray and a few birdsongs began to lace the insect noise. The insects faded away as more and more birds awoke and called to one another. “I can’t believe we made it to morning,” said Dr. G. We still had, hypothetically, more than two thirds of our trip ahead of us. After we broke camp I inspected the ground and found some new burrow holes, indicating that the creature or creatures beneath us had indeed escaped. Whew! Safe on that score.

We were leaning strongly toward calling it quits, but Dr. G wanted to check the mud puddle to see if we could get any water out of it. We scrambled down the creek bed with our heavy packs and found that the water had, indeed, cleared and refilled overnight. I applied some first aid tape to the leaky water bladder and then held the hose for the water filter just above the slime in the two-inch-deep puddle. I would wave off the bees while Dr. G pumped the filter handle, and then we would stand back and wait for the puddle to refill. After four attempts, we were at full capacity. Yes! We were getting all the water we needed for the day from a tiny, dirty, puddle, just like the insects. Dr. G, newly confident, voted to forge ahead. I thought it over and agreed.

“You know, after all that, we’re probably going to come upon some big, lovely, clear pools just around the corner,” I said. The trail was just as difficult to follow, if not more so, than the day before. We both looked like the Lilliputians had come after us with tiny whips; our arms and legs were scored and crosshatched with narrow scrapes. We rounded a corner and came upon a set of dark pools. Dr. G. groaned. Right about then we got lost again. At least we were in the shade, among the pines, I kept telling myself. At least we are together in the great outdoors, beating the odds. At least it’s not too hot.
I spotted a cairn on the other bank and we picked up the trail, temporarily, before it disappeared into a dark thicket. I tried and failed to get into the thicket myself.

We walked around it, and I exclaimed at the decaying body of a red-tailed hawk, scaring something big uphill from us. It started a minor rockslide as it scrambled away, but neither of us was quick enough for a glimpse.

The creek bed split in two, and the cairns were hard to distinguish from the general rocks. We were in full sun now, approaching mid-morning. Dr. G began to question the wisdom of the ever-more-scarce cairns. They disagreed with each other; one would point northwest while another seemed to indicate direct north. We spent more and more time in the creek bed itself, rather than on its banks, and you know how I am with creek beds.

The logs we had to negotiate got bigger and more tangled together. I was looking ahead at a possible cairn on a ridge with Dr. G to my left as I climbed over a weathered gray log, its bark in soft piles beneath it. I put my foot on the other side and as it touched down on the bark the air filled with a loud, harsh rattle. It was like someone shaking a castanet right in my ear. A few feet away, sunning itself on a flat rock, was an alarmed rattlesnake. Dr. G and I leapt back over the log and almost fell over each other in our attempt to give the snake a wide berth. I got a good look at this one; it was about two and a half feet long and gold spotted, with a big rattle, uncoiled and trying to scare us off.

“Now that’s how a rattlesnake is supposed to act!” I told Dr. G. He kept repeating, “Two rattlesnakes! Two rattlesnakes in less than a day.” I studied the terrain and proposed a possible path that would give the snake plenty of room. It involved scaling up the bank and plunging through another thicket, then back down to the creek bed. Dr. G looked me straight in the eye. His expression was grave. “I think it’s time to give up,” he said. That is not the kind of thing that he says, ever, but the occasion called for it. We had only gone a mile in the past two hours and we were just getting to the steep part– a 1200 foot climb. The trail showed no signs of becoming less coy and retiring. The further in we went, the harder it would be to get back if something went wrong. “Okay,” I said. It was bound to be easier to make our way back to the trailhead.

A few hours later we emerged from what I had started calling the Gorge of Snakes and Thickets and sat for a snack to study the map. It hadn’t been easier on the way back; we lost the trail in new places and picked it back up in unfamiliar stretches. We did see a few landmarks, like the dead bird, the campsite, the mud puddle, and the embankment where the water went over. On the forest service map there were a few tents drawn, marking developed campsites. Dr. G tapped the spot with his finger. “How about a late lunch at a restaurant in Globe and some car camping?” It sounded fine to me. I looked at the edge of the map, where there were some notes about the region:

There are over 900 miles of National Forest System trails. Their conditions range from good to terrible. Challenges include steep grades, heavy brush, wash-outs, lack of available water, and sometimes difficulty in finding the trail.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Check. Now they tell me!

The End

I’ve been wanting to see the movie Jesus Camp ever since it came out this summer– the responses to it were so passionate and varied. On one end of the spectrum, you had people who were utterly stunned by what they saw, calling for someone to rescue those children from the fascists. On the other end you had people praising the summer camp to the skies and calling for all Christians to similarly train their children.

Now I hear it’s up for an Oscar. It’s a good movie. I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in American sub-cultures or Christian life or childhood/coming of age stories. The filmmakers, who incidentally are not quite as even-handed as they would like us to believe (I noticed the ominous music undergirding certain scenes), follow a handful of children from Missouri to the Kids on Fire summer camp. Before they go, we meet their families and get a peek at their lives. They are all homeschooled and attend a pentecostal church. One girl prays over her bowling ball on a group outing; another dances to Christian rock in front of her mirror and explains the difficulty of dancing always for God, and never in “the flesh.” A boy laughs at Veggie Tales with his brother and discusses with his mom the “bad reasoning” surrounding global warming.

The kids the filmmakers chose to highlight are great. They are articulate, loving, and passionate. They are creative and silly and secure. Any parent would be proud of kids like these. I know a lot of families who are raising their kids in a very similar way: sheltered, homeschooled, and family- and church- focused. My church teaches children to do some of the same things the summer camp does: pray, prophesy, evangelize, worship.

The children’s pastor who runs the camp, Becky Fisher, is also great in many ways. She has a sense of humor and a wild closet full of props (brains, goo, etc) that she uses for object lessons. I’m totally stealing her balloon idea. She takes children seriously and treats them (for the most part) lovingly, and she never forgets that they are children. The kids, after their time in her camp, leave with a sense of their importance to her, to God, to each other, and the world. All good.

So I can see why many parents and people who work with children feel inspired by the movie. I can also see why it makes some people feel worried. First of all, Becky and the children’s families seem to come from a standpoint labeled by its critics as “dominionist”. From what I understand, that perspective is characterized by a sense of the inevitability of truth: we have the truth, truth is slowly marching over the land, and it is only a matter of time before all of America and the world recognize the Lordship of Christ. To hasten the coming of that day, Christians should move to take power in every domain, spiritual and worldy, and thereby further the cause of Christ. Every sphere of life, from government to education to medicine to entertainment to the free market, should come under the dominion of the Kingdom of God, and it is our job to make that happen through prayer and obedience and allegiance to truth. (If I have mischaracterized dominionist thinking in any way, please offer an alternative description or clarification).

The way this works out practically is in comments like one boy’s mother made, that there was no other possible explanation for the natural world than a six day creation: it was the only thing that made sense. It results in intercessory prayer meetings which become very passionate, often with people crying, yelling, and clapping; or in prayer walks, where people lay spiritual claim to a specific area. It means organizing protests and political action on issues that are seen as especially Christian, such as pro-life activities. It means training to join fields and industries where Christian influence is seen as being in short supply. There’s something of a “beat them at their own game” vibe involved. The Christian entertainment company that produces the Veggie Tales cartoons was hailed for many years as a light in a dark industry, though recently it received criticism for agreeing to tone down its religious message for afternoon network cartoons. A lot of people saw that as a step backwards and a compromise of truth.

At any rate, the kids at camp cry. A lot. They are moved to tears in worship, in repentance of sin, and in intercession for their country. For people not familiar with this type of Christian expression, it can seem a little freaky to hear a group of children crying and screaming to, for instance, “take back the land.” During one strange moment, they all extend their hands to pray over a cardboard cutout of George Bush. Though they were praying generically for him to govern with godly wisdom, it is darn hard to imagine that they would have done the same over a cut-out of Bill Clinton or John Kerry.

It’s unfortunate that war metaphors and comparisons to terrorist camps are made so often by Becky and others in the film. She positions her camp as the Christian alternative to jihadist schools in Palestine and elsewhere, whose fanatical dedication she seems to admire. Neither she nor anyone else in the film intended to convey that Christians should actually pick up weapons and storm the ramparts of the secular world, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people took it that way.

I myself have participated in many of the same activities at different points in my life. They’re not quite as freaky as they appear. Some of them– especially prayer– still form an important part of my response to my culture. Others, I have stepped away from entirely. I’m not a dominionist; I don’t share the same dream of an ideal American culture, and though I want to add love and goodness to the world around me, I feel no need to seek positions of power to do so.

I have two concerns with the way the children in the movie were being taught. First, scripture was almost never read, referenced or quoted. The power and persuasiveness seemed almost entirely experiential. Of course, this could have been a choice of the filmmakers to focus only on the most intense moments; the kids did seem to carry their bibles around a lot.

Second, the children were being raised in what appears to be an entirely closed, self-referential system. They go from home to church to camp and back again. Any encounter with outsiders appears to be mainly an opportunity for evangelism (there’s a great moment when a little girl approaches a group of elderly black men hanging out on the Capitol Mall in D.C.). They are told that every part of their worldview is equally, unquestionably true, from learning to love each other to politically conservative positions on global warming. They are urged to have absolute confidence in what they have been taught.

The claustrophobia of this closed circle came home to me especially when one girl started explaining that there are some churches where God will not visit, because the people just sit there and mouth the words of songs during the service. Even fellow Christians, she seemed to be saying, can be outside the circle. Another moment that this point was pressed home was when the filmmakers contrived to have Becky call a progressive Christian radio show. At the host’s questions, she became flustered, lost her usual articulate poise, and ended up saying silly things, though the other guy’s challenge was not a particularly good one. She wasn’t used to being confronted with other opinions.

I worry for these children because as they grow up they will encounter many other views and ideas. They may not know how to interact with people who don’t share their basic values. They may never learn to reach out beyond superficial contacts or conversion efforts. Alternatively, they may realize that some parts of their closed circle of truth are open to credible challenge or multiple interpretations, even among Christians. They may, upon finding these vulnerabilities, lose faith in the whole package and entirely abandon the way of the cross. That would be sad indeed.

I want to clarify that my comments here are confined to particular children as they and their families and teachers are portrayed in the film– not Christian homeschooling families in general, which come in many shapes and sizes.

I also had a few problems with the film itself. As I mentioned earlier, the music sometimes sent a certain message. There was some artificial cutting and pasting designed to marry the confirmation of Judge Alito and the intercessory prayer at the summer camp, even though they took place during completely different times of year. The directors also staged some scenes after the camp was over– first, the kids meet withan awkward, un-funny Ted Haggard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs; then, they suddenly appear in a pro-life protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. These scenes are so contrived that they fail to demonstrate the themes presented earlier in the film. But the patient attention shown to the small moments of their lives at home and their spiritual awakening at camp make it all worthwhile.

I’ve got another job interview on Friday. This one will be interesting because I’m not sure exactly what I’m interviewing for; it’s the result of a personal contact rather than applying for a posted position. I do know I’m supposed to bring writing samples. I’m still trying to decide between the bodily fluids survey I did on the blog and the poem about a parasite busting out of a crab’s gut. Tough call; they both have their separate charms. The more gore the better, right?

Nervousness isn’t much of an issue for me. Usually, good things result from job and networking interviews that I do. I walk away with some kind of offer– not always the job I applied for, but something (once I got offered a better job, but usually it’s a worse one).

Since I have such positive outcomes, I thought I’d share my magical interviewing secrets with my fellow unemployed stalwarts, sitting in their cold garrets memorizing commonly asked questions. First, I never memorize other people’s lists. Instead, I memorize my own self. There are four big wicker laundry-style baskets kept in my mind’s work-related storage area. They are labeled “Values,” “Skills,” “Characteristics,” and “Stories.” Almost any work story, good or bad, can be useful in an interview, so long as it has a little drama. I keep three or four items in the first three baskets, and six or seven in the fourth. I like to have everything out where I can see it mentally, without too much piled up.

My first goal in an interview is to project an accurate picture of myself by emptying those baskets during the course of the questioning. For any question that is asked, I quickly decide which two things from the baskets I can emphasize best in my answer. Then I pick a story that includes those elements. It’s a simple mix-and-match formula.

For example, let’s say an interviewer prompts, “Describe a time you overcame a challenge.” I look in the values bucket and pull out “clear, honest communication” I look in the characteristics bucket and pull out “learn quickly.” From the stories bucket I grab that time I went ahead on a project without clear direction and had to do it over afterwards.

My answer will be pretty short. “I have always valued clear communication between me and my colleagues. Its importance was highlighted for me when, for the sake of efficiency, I moved ahead on a two-week project to develop the new cheesy snacks policy without clear direction. Two days before deadline, my boss told me I had gotten it all wrong. Though I initially felt discouraged, I listened carefully to her advice. Then I did some extra research in the academic literature and gained a new understanding of the melted havarti situation both historically and worldwide. With these two sources of knowledge, I quickly learned and applied a new strategy and was able to complete the project by the deadline.”

My second goal is to be relaxed and real. The question-answering technique is a bit formulaic, which could work against me, especially in a long interview. So my style of interacting is to behave as I would among friendly colleagues, or with a boss with whom I have a good relationship. Interviewers are trying to imagine how they would feel about sharing an office with me or supervising me, and when they sense authenticity, they like it. They don’t have to guess about what my real personality is.

I crack occasional jokes, I talk about poetry, I make eye contact, I look for ways to connect with my interviewers. Before and after the interview I make small talk and ask advice about the area–hikes, home-buying, whatever. When the interviewers ask something difficult, I just say, “Wow, that’s a doozy. What an insightful question. I’m going to have to mull it over for a second.” Then I take a drink of water to stall until I can come up with a response. After all, in my past jobs, I have never been afraid to admit I need a little time to figure something out. Why should I pretend otherwise now?

My third goal is to help both the interviewers and myself imagine my future place in the organization. I want to get a feel for how it would be to work under or alongside them, and I want them to imagine me doing good work with them. This part is a little trickier. There are three steps. The first is doing research on the company in advance (yay internet!). The second is decoding the values of the interviewers from their questions and interviewing style. The third is asking good questions.

Research is simple– I look at an organization’s whole website, as well as anywhere it appears in the news or academic literature. I look for quotes from the CEO or people that will be over me. Sometimes I even work the info into my answers, where my values and the organzation’s values match up.

Decoding the culture of a workplace is a little tougher, but it can be done. For example, at one interview, I had an exact number of minutes to answer each question, and they were taped to the table in front of me so I could read along with the asker. I could guess from this situation that the department would be unlikely to view tardiness or vagueness kindly.

At the end of an interview, I ask the questions I really want to know the answers to, although always couched in neutral language. “How would you describe the culture of the workplace?” “Who would be my supervisor?” If the person interviewing me would fill that role, I ask, “What is your management style?” I ask how long people typically stay in the position, and what they move on to next. I also ask if they are anticipating any major changes in the mission or organization of the department, and where they expect it to be in the next few years. Usually, they won’t tell me the real answer, but they’ll hint. I stop after about three questions.

If they answer me by referring to me personally, rather than a hypothetical employee, I know I’ve met my goal. “Oh, you would get to sit by the window and eat our experimental sharp cheddar fortnightly.” Yes! I’m in! Sometimes people are surprised to find themselves being interviewed by me. But hey, I gotta know what I gotta know. No point in signing myself up for 40 hours a week of total mystery.

So that’s it. One, two three, shazaam! They dub me Assistant Vizier of Tasty Cheeses, if I so choose. Now, if I could just figure out how to GET interviews for the jobs I want most…

This evening I returned from an event at the university and made a beeline for my tumbler. My tumbler is about 12 inches tall and plastic and purple and, as legend (in my mind) has it, indestructible. I could use it in an afternoon game of “kick the cup” with several 12-year-olds and it would still be in good enough shape to drink a quenching draught of lemonade from afterward. When I accidentally knock it off of a tabletop, it bounces dramatically, with a range of three or four noises depending which part of the cup hits and how much liquid is still in it. Everyone has to stop and wait for it to quit hogging the limelight.


This is a near-ideal tumbler. It has a little texture so it doesn’t slip from my grip; it is big enough that I can gulp as much as I want and then, a few minutes later, still have several good sips left in the bottom. I fill it up with water about three times a day and set it down somewhere I can keep an eye on it, in case I get thirsty. Whenever the diswasher gets loaded up, I just throw it in there for a little germ-killing session.

Up until today, my main problem with the tumbler has been that Dr. G. keeps swiping it for his own use, even though he has one identical in every detail except color– they came from the same clearance bin, even. I swipe his too, so it mostly works out. When you want a drink of water, it’s just easiest to grab the nearest apparently clean receptacle. However, it is dismaying to reach for your trusty water tumbler and find that it has a crust of milk or coffee in the bottom. In such cases, I usurp Dr.G’s water tumbler indefinitely and watch it like a hawk so it stays in my possession.

Now milk and coffee are the least of my problems. This evening, I went to take a swig from the half-full cup, and something dark and bobbing caught my eye as my mouth filled with water. I couldn’t make it out, what with the evening shadows gathering inside my gargantuan tumbler. I set it back on the counter and peered in. A soggy, motionless gray moth. A big one. Its feelers wobbled in the waves of backwash as I spit out my mouthful of water. Euuurrrrrgggggghhhh! Eau de moth! Down the garbage disposal it went.

Hey, here comes Dr. G. with a big purple cup. He is swishing water around in his mouth. Hey, did you wash that cup before you filled it, Dr. G?

The days here are now in the high 70′s. Yes, it’s arrived: that brisk fall weather that signals shorter days and the donning of clothing with more surface area. Along with that fine high 70′s chill comes a certain je ne sais quoi in the air, a heavy brown layer on the horizon, a certain grittiness. Oh, I do know what it is: pollution. The Phoenix harbinger of autumn!

No longer can I while away the days in the secondhand house dress that I bought for a dollar from an old lady on the street that one time. I must abandon the breezy unconstricted freedom of dresses and, at least in the evenings, pull on some pants. This works best if the pants have elastic waistbands because something weird has happened since I moved to Arizona and started sitting around all day! The pants, hidden away in an unused corner of the closet, appear to have shrunk. I can understand their feeling unwanted; I could see how they could begin to feel they are just old rags sitting around taking up space, but I didn’t think they would go to the extremes of actually shrinking. They look the same when I pull them off the shelf. They just feel different.

You might be thinking that an unemployed, as yet unpopular person such as myself would be able to fill at least a few hours in the week with vigorous activity suitable to comfortably reacquainting myself with my pants. A brief review of my daily activities will show that I am far, far too busy. First, I must sleep nine hours. Then I must do some housewife type work, read some spiritual stuff, read some non-spiritual stuff, space out for a really long time, surf the blogosphere leaving inane comments, look for jobs, email friends and contacts, space out again, watch Oprah or something, type “i hate the blank page” over and over in a word document in an attempt to write a poem, take out the trash and get the mail, cook dinner, follow Dr. G around like a puppy, watch a movie or TV show, play a game, blog, erase my two lines of poem that I tried to write earlier, make faces at the digital camera, and then it’s time for bed. You will note that I don’t even have time to wash or groom myself. It’s a mentally rigorous if shockingly sedentary existence. If I have any extra time, I use it for a much-needed nap, or a perusal of the Maricopa County Volunteer Handbook, in which I have circled several phone numbers which I have yet to call.

Unemployment is the enemy of pants.

At my new church, the pastor has been doing a long sermon series on how to love. It is practical and often wise, and I like it best when he structures his messages around metaphor; a well chosen image can be a far better container for meaning than simple exposition. Thus I have passed the weeks saying to myself, “Go up into the house of perfected love. Abide in the house of perfected love.” This was the central metaphor from the first sermon I ever heard him give. It is a house built of God himself.

This whole time I’ve been hoping for a message on how to respond when there’s no payoff for choosing love. I’m not sure how this particular pastor feels about taking suggestions from the peanut gallery, so I’ll pose my question here. For example, maybe the people to whom you have been providing food and medical care beat a few people on your team almost to death, as happened recently to Kelsey in Sudan. Maybe a father disowns his adult child and eventually dies, having never come around to reconciliation. Maybe a spouse moves ahead with the divorce, a teenager commits suicide, a government imprisons and oppresses its people. Maybe nothing ever changes. Does this mean our love is worthless?

This problem of lack of visible results has often been a stumbling block in my own search for faith, in part because my denomination, The Vineyard, teaches its people to expect God: in particular, to expect God to speak, to act, and to heal, often with immediate results. I’m glad my church teaches this sense of expectation, as it serves as a corrective to the lack of hope sometimes found among Christians. But the experience of any Christian life reveals that things don’t always work out immediately, and only seldom the way we expect. Things don’t always work out, period. So how does one develop a faith that is strong and flexible enough to both expect good things and keep steady through months, years, and even generations without breakthroughs or results? Last Sunday, to encourage us, the pastor guaranteed that we would reap what we sowed. If we sowed love, we would eventually get love back. I hope he wasn’t guaranteeing us tangible results in the people and situations around us. I think he meant something like this:

“Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not despitefully use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition, upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves. Every insult they utter only serves to bind us more closely to God and them. Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and to further the triumphs of love.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his book The Cost of Discipleship. I ran across it again the other day in Marilynne Robinson’s book, The Death of Adam. Bonhoeffer was a pastor and theologian in Nazi Germany, and was executed by the Nazis.

Every day, people who never eat escargot or go to the opera read poetry and like it. They aren’t necessarily wise, or soulful, or artsy, or well-trained, or weird, or dedicated. They don’t have to be suckers for shmaltz. They just find some poems that they like, and they read them. Then they say, “Huh! Good poem,” and go about their business.
Somehow, a lot of us have gotten the idea that poetry is difficult, and only for the chosen few. According to this theory, if you are going to read poetry “the right way” you’ve got to be really smart and learn a bunch of rules. But everybody, whether they know it or not, likes poetry. I can say this with confidence for the same reason I can say that everybody likes music. It’s such a big category that any individual is bound to find something meaningful, so long as he can avoid disqualifying himself from the search.

I used to go to wine tasting events with a friend who had, for many years, been a wine buyer for fancy restaurants. It was intimidating to go out with her because she knew all kinds of stuff about vintages and grape seasons and topnotes and finishes and whatnot. But she reassured me that wine tasting isn’t so hard. You just put a little wine in your mouth and see if you like it. If you do, try to remember which one it is. Later, you can work on identifying what it is that you like about certain wines– the sweetness? the peppery zing? the fruity smell? But everyone starts with a simple yes or no.

Her advice about wine tasting also transfers to poetry. A good poem will always capture your attention up front with something pleasing, interesting, or beautiful. It might be the images it scrolls across your inner vision. It might be the sounds of the words or the rhythm of the lines. You don’t necessarily have to know what it is you like, and you don’t have to understand all its complexities and shades of meaning. You just have to take note: this poem is inviting me in. I like it.
Sometimes you can read a poem once and be satisfied, and move on to the sports roundup or the top ten lists. Other poems might draw you back again and again, because you sense there is something else there, some tiny but steady tug. For me, Wallace Stevens’ poems are often that way. I love them right off because they sound great and play around so much (how cool a title is “The Emperor of Ice Cream“?). I don’t usually “get” them on the first take, if ever. But they make such a good first impression, and the characters and voices draw me back, to see what will happen when I read it this time. I may feel a certain darkness behind the bright colors that I want to explore.

I don’t consider myself a bad reader if I look at or hear a poem one time, take it at face value, and abandon it. Some poems are no good. Some poems are only good enough for one time. Some poems are may be good enough for more, but I’m busy, or tired, or looking for something different. Big deal. I don’t have to know the deep dark secrets of every poem and be its best friend forever.
If a regular person did want to read some poems once in awhile, where could they be found? It used to be, a few generations ago, that most of the major newspapers printed poems and poetry reviews. That custom has gone the way of the soda fountain, but all is not lost. Here are some links for anyone wanting to encounter good poetry now and again:

• Poetry Daily– a new poem selected from recent literary journals every day.
• Poet’s Choice– The Washington Post runs a regular column in which a poet (current columnist: Robert Pinsky) picks a poem he or she enjoys, and talks about it a bit. (free registration required)
• Poetry– If you want a regular source of poetry in your mailbox, I recommend this journal. It is a good size to tuck into a purse or briefcase, it’s monthly, and it’s full of variety in its poetry and wit in its commentary. It runs half-off subscription specials in April.
• The Favorite Poem Project-- Has videos and recordings of regular people reciting their favorite poems.
• If you want to search for or look up a poem, a good place to start is the Poetry Foundation’s website or the Academy of American Poets. Poetry X has a good archive too, and on Bartelby you can find stuff that is now in the public domain.
• And Sarah has reminded me of the Writer’s Almanac, which will send a daily poem to your email inbox. (Thanks, Sarah)

This particular adventure began six years ago, when I began lugging around a big sack containing leftover scraps of batiks, prints, and tie-dyes that my tailors gave back to me after sewing interesting outfits that were unfortunate compromises between my instructions (a-line dress with pockets) and the tailor’s sense of style (See? I put giant puffy sleeves on it for you!). I lugged it through half a dozen countries and stuffed it in closets in four apartments back in the States. Surely, I thought, one day I would make a quilt out of it.

Once I got the sewing machine, I pulled out the sack o’ rags to realize my dream. As it turns out, quilting requires both an entire set of tools I don’t own, and a strong personal commitment to precision. My commitment to precision is only sporadic. I put the sack away and waited for more feasible inspiration.

It came in the form of Project Runway, a TV show I watch with a dedication bordering on zeal. Uli was whipping up some frothy concotion of a dress and Dr. G, with a perhaps misguided faith in my design sense, said that I should do that! I should make my own cool one-of-a-kind clothes! Maybe I should learn to sew first, I said. We went to Joann’s and wandered around awhile. Eventually I ended up with a pattern and some cheap polka-dotted cloth from Walmart.

Sewing, I discovered, is actually a misnomer. A more accurate term would be Equal-Amounts-of-Sewing-And-Ironing. I wouldn’t exactly call ironing my nemesis, but in the eighties I had a run-in with a can of spray starch that permanently dampened my enthusiasm for the task. If I had known there was so much pressing this and creasing that, I may not have embarked on the dress making adventure.

But once you’ve got four or five pieces of things sewn together that look remarkably like a dress, you can’t just quit, whatever obstacles you may face. The first one I faced was the mysterious vocabulary of the directions. “Facing sides together, stitch in the ditch then cut the curves. You may find it eaiser at this point to dunk the trollop and underscore the dimple with a triple-quick farce. If you don’t want to underscore the dimple, skip number 10 and go straight to 11.” (ok, so maybe I added a few extra words in there for effect) sometimes google helped; other times I just did whatever I felt like doing.

Next, the machine broke. Since the instruction manual is from 1973, it actually assumes that its owner will be able to disassemble, clean, oil, and otherwise maintain its various parts. This I did, though there was one moment of terror when I could not fit the bobbin shuttle cover back on. Sometimes the fifteenth try is just the ticket! And when excess oil beads up and slides down the needle itself? No problem. Just wipe and go.

Then I kept accidentally using a zigzag stitch when a straight stitch was called for, and also the neck facing was just a torment. Note to self: sleevless and V-neck does not equal “easy.” Oops! I accidentally put the heat-activated fusible facing in the dryer! (oh, so that’s what “heat activated fusible” means. It gets all shiny and sticks together).

Finally, I had a dress! If you didn’t look too closely (say, at the mismatched neck trim, the pointy darts on the bodice, or the wobbly stitching on the hem) it looked alright! Time to try on! Rats. Too tight and too short. All I can figure is that the seam allowance was 3/8ths instead of 5/8ths. A quarter inch doesn’t seem like that much until you multiply it by the total number of seams, to be exact, nine gazillion and fourteen. Then you tend to lose a little necessary yardage. Back to the sewing machine to let out the sides a bit.

I was going for a playful take on a fairly structured early-sixties style dress. I put on the finished product and felt a bit more like an adult pretending to be a five-year-old girl. Dr. G suggested I wear it to the Violet Burning concert. I figured, hey, it’ll be dark in there, why not? Standing outside the venue in the full glare of the streetlight, I struck up a conversation with a woman next to me. “So why are so many people still outside?” I asked. “They’re not letting us in yet,” she said. “By the way, I really like your dress.”

Score! I guess some people don’t closely inspect the seams of others’ dresses? Here it is.

I had my first official job interview today, and as I sat down to type this, I got an email inviting me back for the 2nd and final round. They want to get the position filled by the end of the month. It wasn’t my best interview ever. I left the house late, sped on the freeway, and arrived almost five minutes late. At one point I was asked about my career goals and came up blank, since as a matter of fact I’m pretty fuzzy on that whole area at the moment. My main career goal is to write a book of poems but that doesn’t really fit in with what I want to do to make money. On the other hand, I told a lot of stories and made a lot of funnies (though the only one both interviewers laughed at was really lame: “otherwise I’d just go and write ad copy for The Gap”) and maintained eye contact and smelled faintly of lavendar and had a firm, non-clammy handshake (an achievement in itself, given my perpetually cold fingers).

We haven’t talked about salary at all, yet. I’m trying to steer clear of not-for-profit in order to get back to the salary level I had before I went to grad school to write poems and talk about the meaning of life. When I got to the parking lot, most of the cars seemed to be late-nineties sedans, which doesn’t bode well for the whole salary question. In addition, the grounds were a lake of mud– it’s been raining as if a herd of monkeys were up there shaking water out of the clouds like nuts out of trees. (Wait, monkeys don’t travel in herds, what is it?) I wanted to take the umbrella that my last workplace so kindly gave me before I moved to the arid desert, but I couldn’t find it, having put it in storage. Fortunately there were only a few drops enlivening the mud puddle as i skirted the edge, looking for the front door.

The building itself was concrete block painted white, and the interview took place in an unused office where the white paint was starting to look a little dingy. The furniture was a little banged up and the carpet was industrial dark gray and in need of a shampoo. Dirty windows, too. The interviewers were quite nice, about my age and articulate and interesting. They made me pick my own chair– was it a test? I took the in-between one, neither the highest nor the lowest. At the end I got to ask my own questions, and that’s when things got a little strange. It seemed to me that these two were trying to put a little spin on their answers, to make the place sound appealing to me. I think that people managing a department or business should be proud of how it works, since they are the ones who make it that way. No place is perfect, but straightforwardness in an interview situation can really help both parties find the best match. If a place is, say, firmly heirarchical, it should be unapologetically so; that way if the potential employee is, say, someone who works best in a more collaborative setting, it’s best for everyone to know that up front.
One thing I really wanted a straight answer on was the culture of the place. When I filled out the application I had to declare myself a practicing Christian and put the name, address, and pastor of my church. This had me worried. I am, in fact, a practicing Christian and am quite open about it. But I’m probably not willing to sign my allegiance to a list of forty iron-clad doctrinal statements, or agree to never wear open-toed shoes or promise to never sit with a person of the opposite sex at lunch. I’d be excited to work in a place where Christian integrity and graciousness inform the way business is conducted; I’d feel suffocated in a place where rules circumscribe the growth of my faith or the minutae of my daily activities. So, I asked: “The Christian roots and mission of this organization seem quite important. How would you say that mission influences the workplace?”

This question had them totally flummoxed. There was silence as they tried to use eyebrows to hand the question off to each other. One person talked around it for quite some time and ultimately seemed to say that the Christian support network is there for those who choose to participate, but not necessarily a day-to-day part of existence. “Wouldn’t you agree?” he asked his fellow interviewer. She gave him this huge grin, meaning either “I think you pulled all of that out of your butt” or “I can’t believe you put me on the spot with this hard question”– I’m not sure which. Then she added that the Christianity mostly came into play on a daily basis in terms of ethics. So, I guess it’s not very rulesy there. But that grin! Whatever did it mean?

I guess I can’t ask that in round two, can I? One other possible flag– three out of six people quit this summer. HM! That’s 50%. HM!

Dr. G’s grandmother Ruth liked to say she had lived three lives, and she’d be hard pressed to pick which one was best.

Her first life began on a farm in Northern California, where as a teenager she’d get up before dark to get breakfast for the ranch hands. She cooked on a wood stove and stirred huge, bubbling vats of oatmeal, plopping it into bowls for the men who stumbled down sleepily from the loft. One of her neighbors installed the first flush toilet she had ever seen, though back then it was separate from the house and was called a water closet. All the neighbors lined up to try it out; Ruth once told me about the excitement she felt, hearing the water run down through those pipes the first time.

Ruth finished high school by the time she was sixteen, and there wasn’t much happening in Fall River Mills that interested her. She wanted to meet new people and see some sights, so she did the obvious thing– got a job playing piano in traveling revival meetings. She liked to play loud and with feeling, and though she didn’t have much money, she kept herself busy for many years. She fetched up in Salem, Oregon, where a passionate preacher took a liking to her. Her family advised her to go for it– she was 26 years old after all, no spring chicken! And what else was likely to come along? She’d only known the man a few weeks, but she sized him up and thought he’d do just fine.

It was the Depression. They had a simple wedding and only one worldly possession– an old car– to get them started in their new life, but they went on to raise five lively children together in Oregon, he working in churches or on the railroad, she at home with the kids. Her oldest son, Stan, used to terrify her by blithely jumping off of high places, such as the spiral staircase in the church sanctuary, when he was a very small boy. Years later Stan’s son (the future Dr. G) terrified his own mother in the exact same way.

Ruth’s husband died in 1984, after 45 years of marriage, and thus she began her third life as an independent single woman and the family matriarch. She visited Paris; she kept her subscription to the National Geographic. She drove a Ford Thunderbird and hugged her great-grandchildren at family gatherings. Once, in her nineties, she fell in the bathroom and broke a rib. She spent the whole morning creeping the length of her house to reach the phone and call for help. Afterwards she said it hadn’t been so bad, and she liked living alone, and she continued to do so for a few years afterward. That’s when her “forgetter would get to working” on her, as she described it, though her lively intelligence still came to her aid. “So you’re Stan’s boy?” she’d ask. “And you, (pointing at me)– you were in Africa?” Then she’d use the bits and pieces of information to reconstruct our relationship. “You must be married, you must have been in Africa together, you’re my grandson and his wife.”

Ruth died on Friday at age 95, surrounded by her children. Her descendants include five children, eleven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Her legacy is one of kindess, spiritual faithfulness, and adventure. May her family continue to carry it on. She will be missed.