It’s lucky FRIDAY the 13th!* And here are Five Happy, Happy Bringers.
* From now on, Friday the 13th is going to be considered a very lucky day filled with all good fortune. Okay? Good. It is now so.
1. Enjoying a fire in July (!)
2. Elephant Ears and other Joys of Nature
3. The Cross
4. Hanging these pics correctly the first attempt.
5. Always having the right tools.
Joyful Weekend!
Welcome to the alley of the angels
Hey, they say your eyes can gleam
When you can a just tell the truth all night
(And you can chase them dreams all night)
Welcome to the alley of the angels.
— John Cougar Mellencamp
Places–I love the poetic resonance of that word. Some places are special; you had them growing up, of course you did. And do now. Magical places. Special because of their cocoonishness, or their broad openness. Their smell, or their connection to friends or family. Their lightness, or darkness. Their safety, or risk.
So I was aghast a few years back when I attended a writing conference at the Sea Turtle Inn in Atlantic Beach, FL, and one afternoon decided to skip the meetings and drive down memory lane. I headed south to Jacksonville Beach to find the motel where my family and I vacationed from about the time I was six or seven till I went away to college. It had those wonderful beds where you inserted a quarter into the headboard, and the mattress vibrated! For fifteen minutes! My mother, father and brothers would all hop on. Who needed the Ritz?
I knew exactly where the Horseshoe Motel stood. I had been there SO many times as a kid. But I started to doubt myself when I passed the lifeguard station and came to the ridiculously sharp turn in the road far beyond my memory motel location. I can be dense, so it took me at least three to-and-fro trips before I realized (admitted?) that the place had been demolished for a condo. Sad. A childhood place gone for good.
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I live in beautiful downtown Savannah, smack-dab in the middle of the nation’s largest historic district, to be exact. I can hear the huge freighters blowing their bass notes at night …
… as well as the clatter of horseshoes as carriages tour past Colonial Park Cemetery across the street.
I love walking the Savannah streets, breathing history.
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I don’t really have a backyard, in the traditional sense of the word. But, boy, do I have a backyard! It’s really a small alley, which runs behind the building where I live.
Even though it is communal, and somewhat small, there are hidden crannies where one can sit and read, or laptop, or daydream. It exudes a trace of otherwordliness, a fragrance of excursion. I step into my “backyard,” and suddenly I’m in Europe–Florence, Italy perhaps, trying to decide on which trattoria to frequent. I sit to read in its botanical wealth and am lost, not just in the book’s maze, but in the place, the green, the leafyness, the nowness of nature.
This place calls me to look up, to pause and see.
To view from unfamiliar perspectives and angles.
A tremendous perk of having place appreciation is that windows appear, and open (or shut), and allow you to see just what you desire to see. Or simply, and deliciously, to dream.
There’s power in place.
Both growth and potential growth. Both static and kinetic.
Sometimes sitting is all that’s needed in life. To embrace “is-ness,” accept “am-ness.” Breathing in, breathing out.
A sense and celebration of place, our place, they gift us with calm assurance that we are where we are, for good reason. That rhythm and movement take us (or keep us) where we need to be.
My backyard invites me to …
And such encouragement affirms the heart of this attempt at blogging.
Sometimes you just want a big bite of bread.
Friday! Here are five wonderful adders to my happiness (Is “adder” a word?) (Well, in the way I’m using it, I mean?) (Because “adder” is a type of poisonous snake.) (Yuk!) (Or something non-understandable having to do with computer circuits and addition.)
1. Being okay with not knowing whether some words I use are actually words. Because since I have reached a certain age, I don’t care about such correctness so much. I’m trying to embrace my “is-ness,” you know?
2. Seeing the sun rise over the ocean on Amelia Island Thursday morning.
(Okay maybe I went straight back to bed afterwards. But I did leave the doors open so I could hear the surf.)
3. Earlier in the week, I visited my parents in the small North Georgia town of Ball Ground (where I grew up). Tuesday morning, as is our tradition when I’m home, we made our way to Hardees for coffee and breakfast biscuits (sausage and egg for me, in case you’re wondering).
Well, as luck would have it, when we were handed our coffee cups (by a talkative caramel-colored lady who made the biscuits earlier and who was leaving for Puerto Rico the next morning–I’m a good listener/eavesdropper) and went to the urn (cool word) to pour our brew, the huge container was empty. [That sentence is “weigh” too long, but I don’t feel like revising it right now. There’s a severe heat warning in the Eastern U.S. and I really need to take a cool nap ASAP.]
Back to the coffee urn–since it was still nearly dawn (7:30 ish!) and I was only half conscious, I kept pushing that little handle/lever thingy up and down (in maniacal poking-the-elevator-button-to-make-it-come-faster style) hoping to force some joe into my two-dropsful cup.
My mom, 85, who broke her leg a couple of months ago and struggles with walking, relying on a walker, which we fold up and put in the trunk of the car, had already found a table near a group of extremely LOUD senior citizens and waited semi-patiently for her coffee. Seeing me struggling foolishly with the urn spout, she yelled at a shocking volume over the partying old folks, “Neal it’s empty! Can’t you see that? Tell your daddy to get that pretty black girl to get us some from behind the counter. We know her. Are you sure you don’t want the breakfast platter?”
But my father, 89 in November and an extremely efficient doer-of-things, had other plans. While I was staring, openmouthed, at a hauntingly beautiful, ancient and tiny, bird-like, blue-haired lady wearing an oversized Lady Gaga t-shirt cinched at the waist with one of those orange plastic rings, my dad picked up the large, empty urn from the beverage area and carried it slowly, shakily and singlehandedly to the counter. “There you go,” he said to Caramel, who laughed a good-natured “Oh my!” and said we would have coffee in no time. And we did.
4. Sea oats.
5. The incredible fragrance of jasmine growing on trellisses. Find some and smell it deeply.
These fragrantly beautiful vines were growing in abundance in my parents’ side yard.
Have a spectacular last weekend in June!
Yesterday I attended the 2012 Savannah Asian Festival at the Civic Center. What a fun experience.
I sort of borrowed/stole the above pic from the Facebook page of the beautiful Tuquyen Mach, reporter extraordinaire with WSAV here in Savannah and emcee for this year’s festival (as she was last year).
Here I am cornering the very gracious Tuguyen before she headed back onstage to announce the next festival act.
I love the great attendance at the various festivals held in Savannah. Everyone knows about our city’s St. Patrick’s Day and the Savannah Music Festival, both held each spring, but other events, such as the Irish Festival and this one, also bring out hordes of folks. The civic center was packed.
Hello! Hello! These golden waving cats are bestowing good luck on all passersby. I stood there an hour.
I met some of THE MOST fascinating people. Here I am with Tae Kwon Do Grand Master Jong H. Lee.
And here’s upbeat, helpful Oscar demonstrating his expertise with sais (traditional Okinawan martial arts weapons).
And look at this beautiful Thai princess. I think I was more impressed with her, than she with me. Without land and fortune (only blog fame), she refused to accept my proposal of marriage. Why didn’t I dress better?!
I met some very friendly folks from Crimson Art Henna, based out of Athens, GA. (Henna is an ancient art in which an organic paste is applied to the skin, leaving a reddish-brown stain that lasts from one to three weeks. www.CrimsonArt.com)
I ended up eating a WONDERFUL lunch of delicious rice noodles and savory beefsteak with onions from these ladies.
(For some reason, I think they got the distinct impression that I am famous. I MUST stop introducing myself with, “Hello, you look great! Care to have your picture taken with me? I’m a world famous blogger. No telling how many people around the planet will see this post! Now move to the left a little.)
I loved this festival and all these folks.
I got lost only once.
One of the high points for me was the performance of the Matsuriza Taiko Drummers. Here’s a tiny bit of it–when I joined in.
Okay, okay maybe not my finest video work to date, but you get the “sound” idea.
Here’s to you the bamboo of good fortune. May all blessings come your way!
Amazing festival! Go to 2013’s event. As a matter of fact, let’s all go together.
My only regret about this terrific event is that I didn’t get to hop up onstage and perform like I did at the Irish Festival. Oh well, as the Braves say, there’s always next year.
Yesterday, I retired from full time professorship at Georgia Southern University. Here are five things about my retiring that make me happy/reflective.
1. This cool plaque from CLASS (GSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences).
2. Turning in my grades this morning.
3. Enjoying the silly truthfulness of a message I posted on my Department of Writing and Linguistics listserv, when I announced my approaching retirement: Ten Take-Aways from Being a Professor at Georgia Southern for Twenty-Four Years.
* The student is more important than the subject being taught.
* Listen to the student–she or he has a voice.
* Newton (the ancient classroom building which houses my department) never changes.
* Deans and department chairs do (pretty regularly) (Okay, very regularly.)
* The secretaries really run this place. Be good to them.
* How I arranged my classroom tables, what books I used, what my theoretical framework was (though important) paled in comparison to being in love with teaching young people (and some not-so-young people) and LIKING students.
* Don’t grade everything.
* At least once every week, tell your students something funny–about you, or them or whatever.
* Take a walk around campus every now and then just to take in its natural beauty.
* Don’t take yourself or your job too seriously.
4. A fun saying-goodbye gathering with department members and other collegaues.
Tim Giles and Interim Department Chair Phyllis Dallas.
Mary Hadley, Thomas Klein and Tim.
Terri Welford and Interim Dean Curtis Ricker.
Interim Associate Provost Mike Smith (former CLASS Dean)
Laura Milner and Mary Marwitz
Fellow blogger Emma Bolden
Poet Extraordinaire Eric Nelson
Michael Pemberton and Angela Crow
5. Realizing that being sad at leaving such wonderful colleagues and students proves the joy of having been a part of Georgia Southern University for so long.
Happiest of Weekends to You All!
Office 2225B on the second floor of the Newton Building on the campus of Georgia Southern University. A second home. For a long time.
But my office is cleared out now, books all boxed and removed. Quieter than it has been in eons. Computer-humming quiet. My office phone suddenly shy, afraid to ring and disturb emptiness.
I’m retiring from full-time college teaching.
This evening, after my last set of finals is turned in, I will walk out my door and down my little hallway for the final time as a professor at GSU.
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The Walk.
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Goodbye, goodbye little hallway! Goodbye, goodbye GSU!
Hello, hello ….
I spent my undergraduate years basking in the incredible natural and manmade beauty of Berry College in Rome, Georgia. I will never forget the JOY of studying on the world’s largest campus, surrounded by sites so breathtaking that occasionally, even as a green freshman, I would stop in my tracks on a journey across campus and stare, openmouthed, at the afternoon light shimmering off of Swan Lake or, on a cold February morning, gaze entranced out my Dana Hall second-floor, frosted dorm window into the ordered courtyard below and smile as deer delicately ate holly leaves and startling red berries in the snow. I can still hear my young footfalls on the ancient wooden floors of Berry’s gorgeous chapel (modeled after Christ Church in Alexandria Virginia). And here’s where I ate my meals, the Ford Dining Hall:
What fond and HAPPY Berry memories I have. Oh my gosh, that place was magical!
So, of course, I never thought that another school could compare with Berry.
But for the past twenty-four years, I have taught English at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. When I first arrived, my limited vision focused, uncomfortably, on sand, 100 degree summers and beyond-belief pesky gnats. (Why is that “g” there? Why are gnats ANYWHERE?) “Who could live in this desolate place?” I wondered. But slowly the tall pines and the amazing spring azaleas and (inexplicably) even the hot, humid summers wooed me, and I gradually fell in love. As I adored beautiful Berry as a student, I came to cherish GSU as a professor. The school and the land have been so very good to me.
I have watched GSU’s campus grow and develop into an enclave of living beauty. But far too often, in my busy business of teaching and grading and conferencing, I would forget what thrived outside my office window. So recently I decided to take a leisurely walk across my campus home. Come with me.
Let’s begin at the Akins Blvd. entrance off Veterans Parkway:
The RAC (Recreational Activity Center) where I spent many an hour trying to hold back the belly bulge.
Let’s ride over to the two eagle statues.
Now let’s climb a tree.
Look, I’m an Olympic hero.
Did you know that the “S” in GSU also stands for my last name, Saye?
When I sit down and think about it, I realize how much I have loved this school and this beautiful land.
Georgia Southern University has allowed me to enjoy a great career of helping young people progress and mature into their greater lives. I’ve been involved in a wondrous building process!
I’m so happy that both Berry and Georgia Southern are part of who I am.
Summer office hours … are a bit laidback.
And sometimes it just gets SO hot.
And, probably because it IS so laidback and hot, I get tempted.
But all in all, I love summer school.
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