first efforts

Bamboo forest

Cheekwood Botanical Garden, Saturday afternoon

Not on your tintype, girly-girl!

Apparently I blog like a boy.

Letterpress retro

Wall at Hatch Show Print, Thursday, 3 p.m.

Multicultural music

One of the great things about Nashville is that you can go to the Station Inn every Monday night to see the Time Jumpers, featuring the famous-although-unknown-to-me-until-last-night Ranger Doug...and if you're really, really lucky you'll get to hear their special guest, a young woman from Japan (!) who will blow you away by executing perfectly undulating yodels while belting out a rousing, Ethel Mermanesque version of "I Wanna Be a Cowboy Sweetheart."

I like this city. I like it a lot.

Of butt batons and other things River to River

We 8 The Sandbox survived yet another year of River to River. The weather was great -- sunny and a bit warm, but later in the afternoon the wind picked up just enough to cool us off a bit. We finished in fine style, even making it in just under (and I mean *just*) under eleven hours. Thanks to Jodi's fine work on Leg 8!

This was my sixth River to River - only two more and I will have run the entire 80 miles on my own two feet. That's kinda cool to think about. It's always such a fun day. I love seeing the same teams (and their crazy vans) year after year. Who wouldn't love the Angry Beavers (a team of feisty St. Louis ladies) or the Fastor Pastors (all clergy)? As far as actual running goes, my response to the course is always the same. Everyone else's leg always seems harder than mine and I wonder how I ever did that leg in the past. At the same time, the leg I'm running always seems like the hardest one I've ever done. And what's more, every segment of my leg always seems unbelievably hard while I'm running it, no matter what the stupid book says (what the hell does "moderate to hard" mean, anyway? I was wondering that on my third segment yesterday).

One theme popped up a little more often on the vans this year, perhaps indicating some sort of grassroots uprising: the problem of the "butt baton." Each team carries a baton which must be passed from runner to runner, so you have to carry the baton the whole time you are running. A few people have devised schemes to carry the baton without actually carrying it -- such as running a string through it and clipping it to your waist, or (for women) wedging it underneath the racer-back part of a running bra. But by far the most popular, and disgusting, way to carry the baton if you're too lazy to use your hands is to stuff it in your shorts. Hence, the term "butt baton." How would you like to grab that after your teammate has had it, um, "down there"? Not pleasant. (FYI, in my experience 95% of butt baton offenders are men).

Fortunately, the anti-butt baton contingent was speaking out on the matter this year.

(click on the first image to get a larger visual representation of "the problem")

For the record, We 8 The Sandbox not only bans the butt baton on our own team, but we also actively monitor others' butt batons and tattle on them to their teammates. Because it's a public health issue, people!

Fun run

What do you get when you put 8 sweaty runners in a rented white passenger van stocked with Red Bull, bottled water, M&Ms, bananas, and raw pop tarts, and then ask those runners to take turns running on hilly roads 80 miles across southern Illinois accompanied by 1600 other sweaty runners in 200 rented white passenger vans doing the exact same thing? A helluva good time, that's what!

Later today I'm heading north to Marion, Illinois, to join my C-U runnerpeople for tomorrow's annual River to River Relay. After ditching my beloved team for two years in a row (for conferences! horrors!), I'm thrilled to be back. And even more thrilled that they let me back! This year I am running Leg 2, which is a total of 10.2 miles with the segments described as "easy," "moderate," and "moderate-to-hard." I sweet-talked my way out of Leg 8 (sorry, Jodi!), which at 11.0 miles and with legs marked "hard," "downhill," and "hard," was just too much for this slow girl's cranky hip and allergy lungs right now. Like it or not, though, I'll get my shot at 8 soon enough. Our team has a rule that you have to run each leg before you can repeat a leg. All I have left are 2, 6, and 8, so that doesn't leave much choice for the future. Given that Leg 6 features the single hardest run of the race (can you say, 3-point-8-mile-hill?), I'll probably volunteer for 8 next year. And then save the worst for last in '09. Or go to another conference.

Cheap therapy

Sometimes you just have to walk to the park, spread out a blanket, lie on the ground and stare up at the sky.

Clues?

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a really good article about how, and whether, to look for "clues" to potentially violent behavior in student writing. As the article points out, creative writing courses are often a place where teachers encounter this. But in the context of fiction writing, how does one know what's fantasy, what's simply the residue of living in a violent culture, and what's really a "clue"?

Because we tend to deal in "fact" not "fiction" (at least in the literal senses of the terms), it's my sense that communication folks encounter this kind of thing less often. Still, I have had one experience with a student speech in which the student expressed, in front of me and twenty-plus classmates, what struck nearly all of us as suicidal thoughts. Everything turned out okay in that situation, but I have revisited that experience this week and thought yet again about the fine line between identifying a troubled student, helping him or her, and knowing your own limits and boundaries. It's a complicated dance, to be sure, and we would do well to be as reflective as we can about it, both as individual teachers and as campus communities.

Reeling and ruminating

Like all of us, I'm really upset by what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday: pit-in-my-stomach, anxious, horrified, can't-get-to-sleep upset. As someone who lost a close family member not so long ago, I sympathize deeply for those who lost friends, family, and loved ones. And yesterday's events also strike me right in the heart of where I live: the classroom. I know that teachers are not parents, or mother hens, or big sisters or brothers, but there are times when I feel so fiercely protective of my students that it stuns me. I am sure folks at Va. Tech. feel the same way, and I will be thinking about them as they struggle to get back for themselves some sense of security.

Saturday night with the finnfam girls

First stop: Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, where our heriones try to enjoy the music while sidestepping a variety of super-friendly hugger-n-grabber guys. VERDICT: Those finnfam girls? They still got it! But, popularity has its down side. Time to move on!

Next stop: Robert's Western World. Less butt-grabbin' and more foot-stompin'. VERDICT: Now that's more like it!

(And, that shaggy, blonde, sparkly-shirted guy on the left? That's J.D., a 21-year-old guitar whiz from Arizona. If his guitar-picking and super-cute stage presence are any indication, he's gonna be famous someday. So remember that you saw him here first.)