God Has Videotape

Bzzzzzzzzzz

2007-05-31T20:48:00.000-05:00

I cannot let May 2007 end without a single post here. I haven't lost enthusiasm for blogging; I just don't seem to have any time! I did go out with the camera last weekend and noticed [in a completely unscientific way] that the insect population--butterflies, dragonflies, and bees--was less abundant than this time last year.

The weather, though, is different, much drier than last May. The Old Farmer's Almanac says that Florida will have a wetter than usual June, so I am hoping that thriving wildflowers and higher humidity will fill the air with my little friends.

Spending Time with the Small Things

2007-04-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

I spent two hours at Mead Garden today, sweating in the already hot sun and pursuing little things with the camera. A woman walking her Great Dane warned me to take care near the water as she had just seen a large water moccasin, but I had my doubts, what with all the elementary kids who visit the park by the busloads.

The male anoles were flashing the females everywhere I turned:

The dragonflies were back in force, especially blue dashers:

Even though I have photographed hundreds of blue dashers, I still enjoy them. The photo below I might use as a Christmas card for 2007, a weird little angel perched atop an equally weird little tree:

I also shot a gray-green clubtail, Arigomphus pallidus, another new species for me. Clubtails are not handsome dragonflies, but I always enjoy spotting something new.

And the male pondhawks were dueling with the blue dashers at the water's edge. I never got a good picture of one last year; this shot isn't stupendous, but it's an improvement over my sorry efforts from 2006:

I had a lot of fun, but a big project is taking up my time, and I don't know when I'll get the chance to go out again.

Photo Lesson

2007-04-08T17:11:00.000-05:00

Today I learned that the hostess, anxiously preparing the Easter feast, is never happy to discover that a guest is dissecting the tulip centerpiece and snapping pictures:

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

2007-03-18T11:40:00.000-05:00

Lukas Nursery has a "butterfly encounter," a large enclosure stocked with nectar and larval plants and hundreds of free-flying butterflies. The captives are so tame [or depressed] that they tolerate very close human proximity. Species like the zebra longwing, which I have chased without success at Leu Gardens, will perch on the end of a human finger. So I thought that taking great photos would be as easy as shooting those proverbial fish in a barrel. After dumping the day's haul onto my computer and viewing the 150 shots, I learned otherwise.

I blame my macro lens, which I used exclusively, although I realize that my amateur status as a photographer was more likely the real culprit. I always aim for the eyes, and since the macro lens has such a small area of clear focus, I got lots of super-sharp butterfly eyes while the rest of the insect was reduced to blur. Below are some of my nicer efforts.

A Great Southern White:

Julia Heliconians:

And Zebras:

I'll bet that shooting real fish in a barrel isn't as easy as one might at first think!

Spring Break Adventure

2007-03-13T23:18:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth and I spent the day at Moss Park. I had hoped for lots of dragonfly photo opportunities but was disappointed by the small numbers of insects in inconvenient places. Moss Park has big areas of water, and alligator breeding season is right around the corner, so I was sticking to the shores heavily trafficked by people and boats! I did manage one shot of a cypress clubtail, a new species for me:

And another shot of a sandhill crane pair:

I am definitely feeling out of practice with the camera!

Good or Cool? What's More Important?

2007-02-15T17:09:00.000-05:00

"This is from the heart," Raj insisted, tapping his chest. He was explaining why I was the finest instructor at the college. I listened patiently, uncomfortable with the gush of praise delivered in the hallway. I didn't want to hear that I was "so unlike" the other, presumably bad professors that Raj had taken after his semester of freshman composition with me.

I am not so modest that I can't listen to compliments. The problem was that Raj was the student delivering them.

Raj is Indian or Pakistani, older than I, probably in his late 40s or early 50s. He already has a university degree from his home country, one that isn't honored here in the States, so he has returned to school to pursue the credentials that will allow him to work again as a pharmacist. When Raj was in my class, he was a model student. He was smart, punctual, and prepared. He understood social hierarchies and respected them, beginning each question he asked with a British-inflected "Ma'am." But Raj was far from cool, and his comments bothered me that day in the hallway because he had caught me right after a class with the Show Dog.

The Show Dog is tan, tall, and surferesque but not a surfer. I can tell that his dedication is to the stylist who can streak his hair so beautifully, not to the next wave. He exudes wealth--and not from parents strapped with huge credit card debt who buy him whatever he wants as bribes. No, his parents have real money, and lots of it. I just know that he drives a much more expensive car than I do, and he knows it too.

I assume that he is taking freshman composition in the spring because he flunked out of an expensive 4-year school last semester, probably after four months of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. He has that world weariness that comes from too much high drama early in life. I'll bet that his parents want him close to home so that they can easily return him to rehab, if necessary. Respectable grades during a semester at the local community college might be all the university needs to readmit him next fall, what with the endowment Dad has promised.

The Show Dog is a decent writer but has no interest in improving his skills. He never says a word in class, yet everyone is aware of his presence and behavior. He won't take notes. He sits the entire hour and fifteen minutes with his arms crossed, awake but bored. He is not sullen, just passively tolerating the restrictions on his freedom. Usually when a student doesn't participate--doesn't talk, doesn't take notes, doesn't do the optional bonus-point assignments--the others in the room dismiss him. Their suspicions that the nonperformer is a loser are confirmed when I return heavily marked essays or low quiz scores.

But the Show Dog is so charismatic in his wealth and ennui that I notice my good students mimicking his behavior by putting down their own pens and attempting to replicate his inscrutable face. The Show Dog isn't instigating this minor rebellion--I can tell that he finds all of us so beneath him in money and experience that we hardly register--but my students act as though they are in the presence of a celebrity, and the only way to get his attention is to imitate him.

Now if the Show Dog had stopped me in the hallway to praise my teaching, I would have enjoyed the compliments--although such behavior certainly isn't the Show Dog's style. If I just caught the corners of his mouth upturned in the start of a smile during one of my witty moments in class, that would do. But my humor must be so unsophisticated or safe by the Show Dog's standards that I can't break the stoic blankness of his features.

And here's the self-revelation I'm not much liking: It doesn't matter to me that hardworking, good Raj, whose life has been nothing but challenges and obstacles, appreciates my style and skill as a teacher. I would rather have confirmation that the pampered Show Dog thought I was cool.

Maybe I know that the Rajs of the school are easy to impress; they require only that I have a professional demeanor and an organized class. The Show Dogs, meanwhile, need a level of hipness that I no longer have [and maybe never did]. I don't believe that I will ever get this Show Dog to connect with what I'm doing in class. His refusal to meet me halfway--something the Rajs are all too happy to do--is part of the problem. But that I wasn't able to spark an exception from him means that I am getting too old or too tired to be good and cool.

Out with the Camera Again--Finally!

2007-02-11T13:08:00.000-05:00

I haven't budgeted much camera time lately. The weather, for Florida, has been cold, which I don't tolerate well, and winter isn't the season for insects, my favorite subjects. Plus, I had a nice stash of hoarded photos to post at the photoblog in January and February, since I knew opportunities for new work would be slim to none.

Yesterday, however, I decided to go out. I wasn't expecting any good pictures this early in the year; I just wanted to see if the dragonflies had begun to make their return.

I started at Mead Garden. Perhaps the day was too cloudy and windy, but when I sat quietly at the lake shore, no camera in hand, just observing, I didn't see a single dragonfly skim over the water. I did, however, get a reasonably good shot of a snowy egret:

Next, I drove over to Leu Gardens. There were bees and an occasional butterfly, but I found myself drawn more to flowers. I remember shooting soprano daisies last year but always being disappointed with the results. These, though, I do like:

I also managed one good shot of a sweat bee who was busy in a flower I don't recognize. I love when my big human existence dissolves, and I get to see the world that the little bug inhabits from his perspective.

Do You Need That Emotion Today?

2007-02-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth and I met a friend for lunch. Eventually, Lynda regaled us with tales from her hiking adventure over Christmas break. But first we sat through a long series of complaints: her mother's unrealistic expectations, her boyfriend's refusal to get married, her colleagues' incompetence, her limited income as a single woman in a couple's world. She seemed tired and unhappy, and spring break is still weeks away.

But eventually, Lynda began to recount her trip to Mexico, which included burro riding, all kinds of limit-testing challenges, and beautiful scenery. She stayed at a nice resort in the mountains, and each day her group followed a no-nonsense guide on hikes of various difficulty. Each evening during dinner, the guide would explain the next day's outing, detailing the distance, altitude, level of challenge, and exposure. For Lynda, exposure was the concern; she explained that her fear of heights was something she could control if the trail was wide enough or had natural railings on both sides. But she feared losing her footing and tumbling down the mountain if the trail was narrow and exposed.

One evening, as the guide discussed the next day's challenges, he mentioned that there would be frequent exposure. If any of his hikers thought that they would have a problem, the guide wanted to know immediately.

Lynda went right up to say that she was using this trip to work on her fear of heights, but after his description of the upcoming hike, she thought that she would just relax at the resort.

"He looked right at me and asked, 'Do you need that fear tomorrow?' Like it was my choice. And you know, when he asked me that way, I believed that it was my choice. I thought a second and told him, 'No, I won't need that fear tomorrow.'"

Lynda seemed to get the lesson about fear but didn't see its carryover to other emotions. I wanted to imitate the guide and ask, "Do you need the unhappiness about your mother today? Do you need the disappointment with your boyfriend and colleagues today? Do you need the worry about your finances today?"

Even though I understand the guide's lesson, I'm sure that I don't apply it either. Do I need this impatience with the computer ignorant today? Do I need this boredom with my life today? And on and on.

Why is it that we see that other people have clear choices, but we don't see our own?

Closer to Fine, Closer to Old

2007-01-26T15:23:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth and I went to see the Indigo Girls last night. They performed at the Bob Carr, an intimate venue that sits maybe 500 - 600 people. We enjoyed the opening band, Three5Human, who were so good in a Lenny Kravitz/funk-rock way that I bought their album at iTunes. Three young women got up to dance more often than was polite, waving their wide asses in our faces a little too frequently. But since the three knew all of the words to the songs [and thus qualified as real fans], it was hard to stay annoyed for long.

I had seen the Indigo Girls in concert years ago, after the release of their third or fourth album. That show had been wild, so I tried to prepare Elizabeth for more of the same. They had performed at the Peabody Hotel, in a basement banquet room. Although the stage was slightly raised, the floor was level and the seats were rows and rows of dining room chairs. For a better view, everyone started to stand on the chairs, dancing and clapping. As it was the only way to see, I remember getting up on a chair as well, an act of balance I would never attempt today. Back then, the Indigo Girls were younger and leaner, as was their audience. And what now seems dangerous, uncomfortable, and inconvenient seating was, at the time, just an opportunity for a bunch of young people to have fun.

The audience last night was, as Elizabeth put it, Chablis-sipping yuppies, what those foolish young people from 15 - 20 years ago have become. The chatter around us was middle-age talk about professional jobs, mortgages, and the like. The clothing, the drink choices, the behavior all smacked of maturity, not abandon and folly. Most of us would have happily stood for "Closer to Fine" but preferred sitting in the comfortable chairs, tapping out the beat with a palm to the knee or a heel to the floor, not dancing in the aisles. For god's sake, Elizabeth and I paid $25 for valet parking at the downtown Marriott, a luxury and expense that I could not have afforded on top of the ticket cost 20 years ago.

I did enjoy going to the concert, even though the performance fell on a school night. Listening to an album is enjoyable, but seeing artists create the music live is inspiring. I really need to schedule more things out in the future. But, boy, have I aged, a fact that the concert communicated in clear ways.

Head Shots

2006-12-30T20:27:00.000-05:00

Madeline and Joseph, Elizabeth's sister and nephew, were in town for a visit, and I accompanied them to the Central Florida Zoological Park and the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. Both of these places prove the adage "you get what you pay for." Disney charges $71 dollars for a one-day ticket and delivers ten times the entertainment [and considerably cleaner bathrooms] than did the zoo at $10 or the Audubon Center at $5. But none of us wanted to spend a full day anywhere, so the zoo and Audubon Center were nice alternatives.

I went to the zoo hoping to photograph lions, tigers, and bears--so carefully composing the shots that a viewer couldn't tell I wasn't on safari in Africa--but the zoo disappointed in species and photo opportunities. The few big-ticket animals were behind such heavy wire grate that good pictures were impossible. Many animals--and I couldn't blame them--kept their backs turned to the noisy crowds. The most willing subjects were the flocks of blackbirds willing to do anything for a piece of pretzel [except not shit all over the picnic tables]. Although I didn't capture any exciting wild animals, I got a few pictures where I am happy with the personality that comes through:

The Audubon Center offered even fewer photo opportunities. The eagles and owls were still tethered in their "garden." I tried shooting the vultures in the aviaries, but again the wire grate was problematic; I couldn't both focus past it and keep the subject clear. I did manage to get one shot of a hawk that I like:

I also took some human portraits that my companions enjoyed. I guess that I should be happy expanding my photographic repertoire to include more than bugs, but I must say that I am impatiently awaiting late February/early March and the return of the dragonflies.

The First Dragonflies of 2007

2007-01-15T18:37:00.000-05:00

The temperature was in the low 80s today, so Elizabeth and I decided to spend the MLK holiday at Moss Park. We stopped at Publix, got an "ultimate" sub and organic Cheetos, and picknicked by Lake Mary Jane.

After a hike on the nature trails, Elizabeth sat by the lake to write; I went off to confirm that we have dragonflies in Florida in January. I didn't expect to find any, but once near the edge of the canal that connects Lake Mary Jane to Lake Hart, I caught the familiar sparkle of wings.

Not only did I find dragonflies, I found a new species for me, blue corporals, or Libellula deplanata. At first I thought they were little blue dragonlets, but after reading Dunkle's description of behavior [perching close to the ground] and female coloring [I saw reddish-brown versions], I think that I have photographed blue corporals instead. Dunkle says that blue corporals make their first appearance in Florida in January, so these guys are right on schedule:

It's nice to start the new year with a new species!

Back in the Day

2007-01-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, on the first day back to campus, still adhering to my New Year's resolutions about healthy eating--I brought whole-grain pretzels and vegan chicken noodle soup [Just add water and microwave!]--a mommy colleague accosted me to order Girl Scout cookies. I said no, in part because my colleague's daughter wasn't in tow. It's just wrong to push high-fat cookies on January 4, but it's so much more wrong to have moms selling cookies for their daughters.

I am reaching an age when I remember back in the day.

I was never a Girl Scout--I have been avoiding professional organizations since grade school--but my sister was. I remember helping Melody load up the rusted, red-metal wagon with boxes of cookies, after which we went door-to-door hawking thin mints. We were unsupervised, responsible for the money and cookies ourselves. The troop leader always had a sales contest to motivate the girls; whoever sold the most boxes won a bicycle or some other cool prize, which inspired our forays far from home. Melody always came in second, and when I think back, I now assume the contest was rigged. Our neighborhood--blue-collar working class--bumped up against a more affluent section of the city, all of the kids attending the same elementary school. I'm sure that the troop leader deferred to the wealthier parents, alerting them how many boxes they personally had to purchase to keep their daughters ahead of Melody, who was quite the saleswoman.

Back in the day, Girl Scouts developed independence, learned money management and the value of competition, and honed sales skills. Today, if my mommy colleague is any indication, the girls learn instead to rely on adults to do all of their work. I'm not opposed to Girl Scouts and their mothers sitting outside supermarkets selling boxes of cookies; I assume that the grocery stores require the adult presence for liability issues. I realize that in a world where children routinely get kidnapped or molested, that going door-to-door isn't an option any longer either. But to buy cookies from an adult without the actual Girl Scout present, realizing that the scout will later receive an unearned award, is just wrong.

As I said, I'm reaching that age when I remember back in the day when selling Girl Scout cookies meant dragging a heavy, squeaky, difficult to maneuver wagon all over the city--risking blisters, exhaustion, even robbery--for a colorful embroidered badge and, with any luck, a brand-new bicycle.

Even at work I catch myself responding with "Well, back in the day ..." For example, at the end of last semester, two of my colleagues were responsible for a group of 150 students. The "in charge" professor was tenured; he was paired with a much younger, temporary-contract colleague. Mr. In-Charge, despite the importance of the event, failed to show up on time, leaving Ms. Temporary Contract waiting in the auditorium lobby with 150 irate students. The gossip is that she just waited. She didn't call security to come unlock the door; she didn't contact the department office for directions. Her name didn't have "in charge" beside it on the assignment sheet, so she chose to stand there and broadcast her ineffectiveness. If last semester had been her first, I would understand, but she has worked at the college for a number of years and should know how to make things happen. But like Mommy Colleague's daughter, she has learned to let the "real" adults do everything and, when they're not around, just let nothing get done.

My second semester at the college, my primary duty was staffing the lab component of college-prep courses. I supervised/helped students who were working individually on problem areas in reading and writing. One evening during the first week of classes, a group of 25 students arrived in the lab. They had been sitting in an upstairs classroom for half an hour waiting for the instructor to show up. Now this happened back in the day, the late 80s, when I didn't have instant access via the Internet to faculty schedules. The students had an evening class, so the department office was closed. I had no one in authority for them to contact.

I could have shrugged my shoulders and told them that I didn't know what they should do. I could have advised them to go home when they got tired of waiting. But instead, I made an executive decision. Even though I was beginning only my second semester, I knew that the first meeting of prep classes included a "diagnostic" that determined what students worked on when they came to lab. I had copies of the diagnostic, so I had everyone sign an attendance sheet and take the test. I gave them the department phone number so that they could contact the office the next day to learn what had gone wrong. I told them not to worry, that there had to be a logical explanation for their professor's absence. I collected everyone's work as they finished.

It turned out that the dean, who, back in the day, handwrote faculty schedules on a tabled form, had told the instructor that she taught on Thursday night instead of Tuesday, the evening when the students showed up. No one was upset because I had not wasted anyone's time. The students performed a meaningful task and got credit for their presence, and the professor didn't lose an entire three-hour block of teaching time. "The only other thing I would have done," she explained as she thanked me, "was go over the syllabus, and we can do that next Tuesday." My dean was especially pleased because his error did not result in angry students, an angry faculty member, and a class beginning badly, as it would have if I had just waited.

And I didn't just wait because my childhood experiences had taught me to take responsibility and act--the advantages of growing up "back in the day."

In Retrospect, Tonight's Dinner Wasn't That Bad

2007-01-01T19:09:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth and I went to Brio's Tuscan Grille for dinner tonight. Elizabeth had prepared an elaborate early New Year's meal while Madeline and Joseph were here, featuring a $70 prime rib, and I wanted to return the favor and take her out someplace nice to eat.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was chaotic and incompetent. Our bad experience began when the hostess seated us for our 4:30 reservation at a table that wasn't staffed with a waiter until 5 p.m. Elizabeth eventually went to complain, but we waited another five or so minutes before anyone came to greet us. The poor waiter apologized and promised to make it up to us, but that was not to happen, as he immediately got a huge table of Brazilians who neither spoke nor read English. I watched our waiter spend 30 minutes just trying to take their orders.

When our tournedos arrived, we discovered that the chef had mistaken medium rare for medium well. One of Elizabeth's little filets had the consistency of a piece of charcoal. She insisted on speaking to the manager, who took her entire meal off the ticket. We were so unhappy that we left without crème brûlée or cappuccino, two extravagences we enjoy when we eat there.

In retrospect, though, tonight's meal wasn't that bad, just disappointing. My worst restaurant experience happened many, many years ago. My father had come to town and wanted to assemble and feed the family in the excessive and expensive manner that is his style. We had reservations at a steak house; I made the mistake of walking over to my grandmother's house, where my father picked us both up. I'm sure that a step-mother accompanied Dad on this trip to Florida, but which one I don't recall. We met my sister and her dick-brain first husband at the restaurant. Dick-Brain was an assistant manager at a Firestone; he met my sister Melody while selling her tires after a boyfriend's ex-girlfriend had slashed hers.

Melody and Dick-Brain had driven in from Lakeland. They arrived first and waited in the bar drinking. After greeting them, we followed the hostess to a table where the horror began.

The waitress arrived, which immediately soured my father, for he believes that men are the only capable servers. The waitress detailed the specials and began to take drink orders. My sister and Dick-Brain ordered a second round of whatever they had gotten from the bar. Dad was paying, so they planned to get smashed on free booze. This was years ago when we were all a lot younger--so young, in fact, that the waitress asked to see ID to confirm that Melody and Dick-Brain were both 21.

Despite having driven an hour from Lakeland, despite the very real possiblity that they would be drunk on the way home, die in a car crash, and need identification so that cops could call their next-of-kin, neither of them had a driver's license. Dick-Brain mentioned that the bartender had had no problem serving them.

The waitress explained that she would lose her job if she didn't check ID; Dick-Brain countered that he would just walk back to the bar when he and Melody needed their next drink. Dick-Brain was displeased because he, rather than my father, would have to pay for any future alcohol. My father growled, "Just get them their drinks," but the waitress stood her ground.

Now Dick-Brain should have apologized and ordered Cokes; it was his and my sister's fault that they didn't have their licenses, not the waitress's fault that her job had rules. Meanwhile, my father stewed; he couldn't ask to see the manager about this problem since the waitress was clearly in the right, but on his face, I could see him planning the many ways he would make the waitress miserable as the meal progressed.

We ordered our food, and while we waited for it to arrive, Dad and Dick-Brain bitched about the waitress. We were a party of six at a large round table in an intimate little room with four or five other tables of guests. Dad and Dick-Brain were loud and mean, and I could tell that their conversation was making everyone within earshot uncomfortable. I'm sure that other wait staff delivered the gist of their comments to our poor waitress.

When the meals arrived, my father found something wrong with his and sent it back. When the waitress grabbed his plate only, he insisted that she take everyone's with her because we were there to eat together, that he refused to watch everyone being polite and letting their food get cold while he waited for the return of his steak.

The waitress took away all of our dinners, fixed whatever Dad had found complaint with, and returned. My father then scrutinized everyone's dish. He found something wrong with someone's plate--maybe the bernaise sauce had thickened on the meat, maybe the vegetables looked wilted, I don't remember. He made a big production of how he wasn't going to let his family eat inferior food because a stupid waitress had messed up his initial order. He demanded to speak to the manager.

Our frazzled waitress left to get her boss. I was nauseated with Dad's behavior long before this latest outburst; dinner was irrevocably ruined. I should have excused myself and left the restaurant, but I didn't have a car, and the pair of dress shoes I was wearing would have tortured my feet during the five-mile walk home. Plus, Dad was such a tyrant. Even though I was already an adult, gainfully employed at the college, I felt like a child in his presence and couldn't stand up for myself or for the waitress.

The manager took away all of our dinners a second time. Then he served our table through the rest of meal; we never saw the waitress again. Even though we now had a male attending to our needs, my father criticized every part of the experience. Dick-Brain, who was enjoying watching Dad control the staff, egged him on.

I refused ever to eat with that group again, fabricating responsibilities that I couldn't escape when asked to join them. Melody soon after divorced Dick-Brain and moved to Husband #2, so the possibility of that particular combination of personalities disappeared. I have never since allowed my father to pick me up, insisting that I meet him at the restaurant in my own car. As I recall this meal with my father, I realize that I would rather suffer through a bad experience happening to us, as occured tonight, than watch people at my table bullying the staff.

A Great Way to End the Year

2006-12-31T19:27:00.000-05:00

Mom called after Christmas to say that she and Step-Dad would be "camping" at Moss Park for ten days. I have to use quotation marks around camping because the park is only ten miles from their home, which they return to every day to shower, pick up mail and the newspaper, get food, etc. Plus, Mom is still working her part-time, pocket-money job. So they are not camping but "camping." As I have yet to see their new RV, they invited me to visit. Mom gave me a detailed schedule of when they would/would not be there during the ten days. She assured me they were spending all of New Year's Eve day at the campsite.

So this morning Elizabeth and I agreed that we were up for an adventure, got in the car, and drove to the park. I wasn't going to photograph anything; my plan was to find Mom and Step-Dad, compliment the new RV, drink a Coke, wish them a happy new year, and come home. Elizabeth advised that I pack the camera just in case.

When we arrived at the park, I spotted a pair of sandhill cranes and, happy to have the Canon with me, went in pursuit of pictures. A very tame flock lives there year-round; I saw one pair right next to a picnic table begging a family for cook-out goodies.

We walked down to the shores of Lake Mary Jane so that I could evaluate dragonfly potential in the spring. A couple of turkey vultures wheeled on the thermal currents overhead. Elizabeth had me take their pictures as she is writing a novel with vultures as supporting characters:

Elizabeth noticed a white sulphur nectaring at some weeds and said, "There's one of your peeps, Sparky." I explained that I was not photographing bugs today, but then I spotted a dragonfly perched near the shore. I couldn't believe it! A dragonfly on the last day of 2006, willing to pose for its portrait!

I called Mom on my cellphone so that she could direct us to the campsite only to learn that she and Step-Dad were at their real home and not in the park. "Camping," you see.

So Elizabeth and I continued our tour. I found a barred yellow sulphur. This species is not a spectacular butterfly, but it's also not one that I've ever photographed before:

We also spotted an enormous black and white beetle that sounded as if it collided with a pine tree. I'm not sure what type it is. There are too many beetle pictures at Bugguide.net to search for a match.

Even though I missed seeing Mom and Step-Dad, I really enjoyed the trip. It's a long drive, but this park has many photo opportunities for the future.

You're So Vain

2005-06-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

This blog is a work of fiction. Although real-life events might inspire what I will write, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, will be purely coincidental.

If you think a post is about you, start humming that Carly Simon hit, "You're so vain ..."

In Defense of the 5-Paragraph Essay

2006-12-09T13:05:00.000-05:00

Intellectually, we humans know that we share the world with other people. But our physical experience, locked as we are in our own heads and bodies, is that we each are the center of the universe, around which all other people revolve. Perhaps Zen masters transcend this restriction, but most of us can't. Our special people are close, as Mercury is to the sun; other folks, like an asshole swerving into our lane without a turn signal, are as distant as Pluto. Frustrations arrive when our satellites don't circle us in the predictable manner we expect, whether it is a lover who forgets an anniversary or the asshole who neglects to check his blind spot.

I regularly visit Rate Your Students and a handful of other blogs by academics. At these sites, posts often vent frustration because someone's satellites have jumped orbit instead of dutifully revolving as the writer/center of the universe believes they should. The irritation is natural, as is the venting. God knows, I've done enough of the same here at my own blog.

But I want to share this observation: The people who survive as teachers, the people who become really good in the classroom, know that not all students share the same interests as the teacher. Most students, in fact, do not want to acquire expertise in the area the teacher loves; they are merely fulfilling a graduation requirement. The sooner a young professor learns that everyone in class will not adore the material or skill as she does, that the lack of enthusiasm isn't personal, the easier life will be. Mr. Miyagi, of Karate Kid fame, is a great teacher because Daniel wants to learn martial arts. We wouldn't be very impressed with Mr. Miyagi's teaching skills, though, if Elle Woods of Legally Blonde were under his tutelage.

Students aren't engaged in a lot of their academic work because their gifts lie elsewhere, either in disciplines different from the ones we teach or in other areas of life. Someone whose gift is, for example, nurturing children or animals might enjoy her psychology class but not mathematics. Her developmental psychology professor might be really impressed; her statistics professor, not so much. As a composition teacher, I know that most of my students don't want to write in an academic fashion. They're more interested in updating their MySpace pages than producing essays. That's not a fault; I would rather write a blog post here than solve calculus problems or dissect fetal pigs, activities that some of my poorer writers would prefer to producing their next essay for me.

Armed with this knowledge, I have to inspire my students to write essays that I can tolerate reading--because that is the nature of our relationship, they write and I evaluate. So I teach as a starting point--and for some of them, the only pattern they will master--the 5-paragraph essay. In a college composition class. And without apologies.

No predictable form is without the potential for art. No one would slam Bashō because his haiku provided only 17 anticipated syllables; I wouldn't tell Shakespeare that his sonnets were worthless because they were the expected 14 lines and had a predictable rhyme scheme. And I wouldn't say to a student, "five-paragraph essays have no place outside of a seventh-grade English class," because the rules for that pattern can produce a great essay. As every creative writing teacher can confirm, lots of student-composed, 17-syllable haiku are garbage; lots of 14-line sonnets are trash; and, of course, many composition teachers will lament that lots of 5-paragraph essays suck too, but the reason is a lack of skill on the part of the writer, not a problem with the form itself.

To be perfectly honest, I have never understood why the 5-paragraph essay gets such a bum rap. Every coherent piece of writing has a beginning, middle, and end, as does the 5-paragraph essay. In school, students write to show what they know, so giving three examples, consequences, or reasons to prove X will make any professor in biology, history, or humanities happy. If an essay question asks for five examples or two consequences, modifying the basic format of the 5-paragraph essay to seven or four paragraphs is a no-brainer. Using multiple paragraphs for each of the three restrictions in the thesis statement to turn a 2 - 3 page paper into a longer 10 - 20 page effort is also easy to demonstrate in class. The three-paragraph essay is the basis for all composition; a five-paragraph paper a more developed artifact of the thought process.

Did I write this blog post as a 5-paragraph essay? Of course not. Do I ever consciously plan a piece of writing using the 5-paragraph pattern of organization? Never! I have skills and desire to write that the novices in my classes do not. Some of my students are like budding Michelangelos or Monets; most, however, are paint-by-number and color-in-the-lines types of folk. This is the reality, and the sooner a faculty member learns this truth, the more years she'll get before burnout.

Every institution of higher learning has its star alumni. Most graduates, though, leave to become society's drones. Giving them a malleable writing formula like the 5-paragraph essay allows these folks to produce everything from letters to credit card companies, business reports for the boss, or holiday letters tucked into Christmas cards:

Seasons greetings, everyone! We had a great 2006, but these three events really stood out! First, Sparky won ...

No Wrapping Required

2006-12-21T19:54:00.000-05:00

Even though this is the end of December, we have been averaging temperatures in the high 70s for several days. Sometimes I get anxious that global warming will make my inland home beachfront property in a couple of years. But then I consult Weather Underground, where I see that the record for December 21--set in 1954, long before Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth--is 85 degrees, even higher.

So I have been out with the camera, hoping to get a big enough "cushion" of photographs to last through the usually bleak January and first part of February. Butterflies galore are nectaring at year-round flowers like pentas; the hibiscuses aren't melting in the heat as they do during the summer; and bees are plentiful. So I have found many willing subjects for the photoblog. I didn't have any hopes for dragonflies, though, as their season, I thought, had come to an end.

Then a gift landed from the sky and perched on a pruned stick:

Maybe the beautiful weather inspired this roseate skimmer to leave his aquatic life at the lake and take to the air. Maybe dragonflies are year-round in Florida, just harder to find in the cooler months. Whatever the explanation for his presence, I enjoyed the addictive hunt for the perfect portrait.

I hope he gets a week or two of good temperatures so that he can darken to the pinks and purples of a mature male, eat many tasty insects, and find himself a good woman.

An Observation

2006-12-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

The bottom drawer of my filing cabinet contains all the student work I must keep for one semester: the file exam blue books and scantrons, attendance sheets, Excel printouts, testing center receipts, and the like. Today, to make room for this semester's must-keeps, I tossed all of the paper I had saved from the summer. Before I filled the trashcan, I went through the piles looking for items that should be shredded instead of trashed.

Over the summer I taught one group of prep students, folks whose placement scores indicated that they weren't ready for college-level work. Their blue books were mixed with final exams from the college-level students I had. As I sorted work into "shred" and "toss" piles, one thing I looked for was a social security number on the front of the blue book.

I tell students, as do their other professors, the student handbook, the nightly news--not to enter their social security numbers on anything, to substitute their student ID numbers on college materials. [Although the college went to a student number system of identification 4 or so years ago, paperwork all over campus is just now catching up.] During the last week of class, I must have warned them at least 5 times that they needed to protect their identities.

But as I was flipping through the blue books, I noticed that all but one of my prep students had written their social security number where the blue book cover asked for it! [Identity thieves would dance with joy after noticing the name, signature, address, and telephone number dutifully added.] In comparison, the three sections of college-level students had followed my directions and substituted their college ID number.

Most prep students believe that they do not need remedial classes, that the college is wasting their time and stealing their money. If I had the opportunity to meet that class one more time, I would explain to them that yes, they did need their prep classes. That semester of remediation was their last opportunity to fix bad habits that would ruin their future success in both the academic and professional world--namely acting before thinking about the consequences and not following directions.

Atonement with the Father

2006-12-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

I invoked the spirits of two dead colleagues yesterday while consulting with a student in freshman composition. The first sitting for the big do-or-die, department-graded final exam starts tomorrow, and I have been meeting with everyone to discuss the last in-class practice essay. I had given the topic "something that everyone should get for free" and read a number of papers on health care and textbooks. Julia, however, had written her essay on underwear, explaining why bras and panties shouldn't cost a penny.

The essay was fresh and interesting, but Julia made a common mistake: she used second-person pronouns, you and the like, throughout the paper, addressing me, the reader. I explained to her that Professors Fielding and Hammond, both male, might be the two evaluators of her final exam and would not want to be addressed as if they were women with bra and panty concerns. I advised her to replace the yous with first-person Is.

I know why I invoked Dave and Glen in my explanation to Julia. They were already senior colleagues when I began working here at 21, and the inexperienced, younger I thought them ruthless, careless evaluators who failed my students after just glancing at their papers, inconsiderate of the whole semester I had spent training those writers. [Today, I would substitute objective and experienced for ruthless and careless; that's what 22 years of classroom experience have done for me!] Speaking their names conjured their presence in my office, even though both men died shortly after retirement, bodies destroyed by too much abuse.

When I was younger, Dave and Glen were the antithesis of what I wanted for my professional life. Both were burnouts, but in different ways. Dave took campus politicking seriously--but not anything that happened in the classroom. Despite his ennui, his classes filled faster than anyone's when registration began; students considered him fun and easy. He sexed up every paper topic, every piece of literature he taught, and passed anyone who made an effort. He didn't bother to learn his students' names, but the easy As made everyone feel good, made everyone love him. Glen, too, had long since lost his enthusiasm for the job, but he blamed his students. He believed that the students had changed, not he himself. In his mind, the inadequate, unprepared folks who sat in his classes deserved nothing but his contempt and anger; his students dropped like flies. These two men were best of friends; at department gradings they competed to see who could read the most essays.

Years ago, the young-snot me couldn't understand why Dave and Glen appreciated their positions, tenure, and influence so little. I desired what they had, and I vowed that I wouldn't turn into them. Not all old-fart faculty were burnouts like these two; I had role models who were courteous and professional, who still enjoyed students and the classroom--or at least did a damn good job pretending.

But after 22 years at the college, 18 of them as a full-time instructor, I have reached the stage that Joseph Campbell, in his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, calls "atonement with the father." During the life-altering adventure detailed in this book, Campbell claims the hero must experience "at one ment" with his biological father--or a father figure or a strong masculine force. During the "at one ment," the hero realizes that an undesirable quality of the father resides in himself as well. Sometimes, after this recognition, the hero can keep the quality at bay. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker realizes that the undesirable dark side of the Force can tempt him, too, but he does not cross over as Darth Vader, his father, did. Sometimes, the hero embraces the once-undesirable quality, as does Neo in The Matrix, who realizes that he has the same level of commitment that Morpheus, his father figure, has shown.

I am at the point where I now understand Dave and Glen, where I have reached "at one ment" with my "fathers." Too many semesters of the same--the same student errors and excuses, the same accomplish-nothing committee work, the same predictable comments made by the same colleagues at department meetings, the same drive on the same road to work--are the cause of my own ennui. I don't think that a Zen master could sit through 22 three-hour graduation ceremonies, sweating in the hot robe, squirming on the uncomfortable folding chair, and not be over that experience. I cannot begin acting like a young snot again; that would mean that I would have to give up the maturity that makes me good.

So I am at a three-pronged fork in the road. Do I follow in the footsteps of the faculty who were pleasant and professional until retirement--even though I believe that they were secretly going through the motions, nothing more? Do I go where Glen beckons, down a path of anger and bitterness? Do I choose Dave's route, where fun process matters more than competent product? Or do I just get off the damn road, preferring to tramp through a field without the conventional guidance of concrete beneath my feet? These are the questions I am considering after atoning with my fathers.

Sierra's Side

2006-12-06T15:54:00.000-05:00

I have a real office at school, not a cubicle, but the walls that separate me from the bio-chem professor to my left and the social science dude to my right are just drywall partitions. Even when we all have our doors closed, I can still hear my neighbors' phone conversations, student meetings, chair squeaks, paper rustling, and farts. I assume that all of my noise is audible to them as well.

As final exams are looming, I spent the day with my door open so that students who needed to speak with me would realize I was available. My colleagues had their own doors open too, so we were swapping all kinds of sounds along the hallway. At one point, my phone rang, and when I answered it, I discovered Sierra at the other end. The tragedy! Her grandmother had just had a stroke, so she would be unable to bring her portfolio and other late work to the appointment we had in twenty minutes.

"Sierra," I said loudly enough for everyone on the hallway to hear, "If you are not in my office at 1 p.m., as we agreed, your notebook gets a zero, and I will not take any of the other late work you owe me. You will then have no chance of passing this class."

I know I sounded stern and inflexible. Since I didn't have speaker phone on, my colleagues didn't know why the student I addressed wasn't able to be come to the meeting, but even if they did hear Sierra's half of the conversation, I doubt that they would have had any sympathy for her. We are all hearing lame-o excuses as students who have been fooling themselves, their friends, their parents are quickly coming to the realization that they are failing one or all of their classes.

In Sierra's case, I don't believe that her grandmother really had a stroke. Sierra missed too many classes, too many quizzes, too many deadlines. Each time she explained the lapse of responsibility with a variation of "Grandma died": either she had to drive her father to the emergency room, or sit with her brother during his asthma attack, or stay close to a toilet after a bad bout of food poisoning. And then there was the trip to Atlantic City for a wedding not her own. I don't like to get in the way of a student's success, but I can reach a point where I conclude that failing the class is the best lesson that student can receive.

What will happen, though, if Sierra goes to my dean to complain? I can hear Sierra whine, "My grandma had a stroke, and mean ol' Professor Lightbulb wouldn't let me turn in my work even though I explained to her that I had to be at the hospital!" My dean is experienced enough to know that not all student complaints are legitimate, but she doesn't know Sierra's long history of bogus excuses. And don't I sound like a real hard-ass if you only know Sierra's side of the story!

Getting Wintery

2006-11-26T17:40:00.000-05:00

After a week of record lows, the weather finally warmed yesterday, so I drove to Mead Garden, a protected wetland/park that has a small, dragonfly-friendly lake at its center. Unlike the over-groomed lake near the house, this little body of water has a variety of aquatic plants along the shore where dragonflies can perch. I figured that it might be my best last-chance spot to photograph my favorite quarry.

Despite the sun and temperature near 80, dragonflies were scarce. One lone darner patrolled over the water, and a couple of male roseate skimmers, always difficult to photograph, zipped among the plants, resting occasionally:

I could also find perching blue dashers. I like that the light and colors indicate that winter is near:

I spotted damselflies too but had a hard time getting close enough for good shots:

I guess that dragonfly season really is coming to a close, that I'll have to wait for the new year before I get the color and variety I took for granted just a month or so ago!

Near the End?

2006-11-17T18:27:00.000-05:00

I trekked around Leu Gardens today. It was too bright and sunny for any good pictures, and the dragonflies were in a depressing state. I found one Carolina saddlebags covered with mites:

And then I found another female looking thin, tired, and raggedy, as if she can barely hold on:

I guess like the grass which has finally stopped growing, the dragonflies need to die off to let the shorelines rest for the winter.

45 Minutes Down at the Lake

2006-11-14T19:00:00.000-05:00

If there weren't so many responsibilities! But I always have papers to evaluate, classes to plan, and email to answer, and the hours that I spend at work slip away. Despite promises to myself, despite packing the heavy camera, I haven't gotten down to Lake Pamela. Yesterday, I finally made a real effort, but because of schedule constraints, I had only 45 minutes.

At 2 p.m. the sun was already past its zenith and beginning its descent. Since I had chosen to walk counter clockwise, I had to squint the entire trip around, which made spying small things more difficult. Our lowest temperatures have been in the 50s, so I thought that the dragonfly population would still be strong, but I was wrong. There were still specimens, but fewer in number and species. I didn't see a single four-spotted pennant, my favorite bug of 2006. The blue dashers were battling at the water's edge and saddlebag pairs flying in tandem were abundant.

I did manage to capture a pair of Rambur's forktails, insuring future children for me to photograph!

And luckily I noticed this black saddlebags perched:

The picture isn't good for identification purposes because the markings on the hind wings aren't visible, but I love those giant eyes looking right at the lens. Black saddlebags are not handsome dragonflies, but at least this guy has a little personality, and I have one more species to add to my capture list!

If Only

2006-11-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

Sometimes students handle situations so stupidly/badly that I must be a hard-ass when, in fact, I would have ignored or not punished the behavior if only the students had demonstrated more sense. For example, this past weekend, a student emailed me to explain that she had just agreed to adopt a puppy from an idiot neighbor. The irresponsible owner had allowed her female to get pregnant, didn't want to be bothered with the puppies, and announced to the neighborhood that she was driving them to the pound. Eliana and her friends decided to each adopt one. Because the idiot neighbor didn't want the puppies interfering with Thanksgiving dinner, she insisted that Eliana and her friends take them now at 4 weeks old. The puppies will need bottle feeding, so Eliana asked if she could bring hers to class so that she could take care of this responsibility on campus. She promised the puppy would remain in her purse.

Now what was the mistake? Emailing me, of course! I'm a dog lover; I believe that Eliana is trying to do a humane thing in a world often cruel to animals. But because I know about the dog's presence, I cannot allow it. I doubt that anyone in the room has such severe allergies to pet dander that the puppy will cause an asthma attack, but because it might, I can't say, "Sure, Eliana, bring your little doggie to class," in an email saved to the college server. If only she had just brought the damn dog hidden in her purse, then I wouldn't have to start quoting college policy. If the puppy began barking or wimpering, Eliana could have apologized then.

I had another student try to have a temper tantrum in class as I was returning graded work. I had marked "zero points" on the score sheet for a part of the assignment that was missing. All the rest of the work I had stapled together. Kristopher cried, "But I did do that part!" as he waved a separate sheet of paper in the air rather than pointing to anything in the stapled packet I had overlooked.

"If you had given that to me last week when it was due, it would be stapled with everything else," I explained.

"This isn't fair! I deserve those points. My work is right here. You're the second professor who has lost one of my papers this week!"

Maybe Kristopher did finish that portion on time but forgot to include it with all of the other pieces that he submitted--I have had him run out to his car half a dozen times this semester to fetch something that was due, and he returned in 5 minutes with the assignment. Maybe he didn't finish that portion until after I collected the work, hoping that feigned indignation would buy an extension today. Maybe he had indeed given me the piece. My office isn't in a wind tunnel, and I am very organized. But I am also human and might have stapled it with another student's work.

"You are not being fair," he said again as he stomped out after I dismissed class.

I didn't budge because Kristopher wasn't behaving like someone legitimately aggrieved. He was instead acting like a 4-year-old who wanted his bowl of ice cream immediately, even though a pile of carrots still lay on his dinner plate. If the error really had been mine--and I admit the possibility--he should have stopped by my office to discuss the matter instead of ranting in a classroom full of fellow students. If only he had met with me privately to say, "Really, Professor Lightbulb, I gave you that piece last week. I understand that you might not believe me, but I just want to say that I did turn it in," I would have taken the work and credited his score sheet.

The third student made a big enough blunder that I withdrew him. I had already warned Julio--per college policy--that he had too many absences and too much missing work. Then he missed another Tuesday and the following Thursday sent an email explaining that St. Cloud was under a tornado watch [as was all of Central Florida], it was raining really hard [so hard, in fact, that my shoes and pants didn't dry out until noon], so he wouldn't be in class again but did want to know if I had graded all of his late work. I curtly replied that I hadn't received any late work and that if he didn't hand deliver hard copies by 2 p.m. that day, I was withdrawing him.

Of course he never came. I waited until today before I withdrew him--long after the tornado watch had expired--but I did have to do it. Experience has taught me that when a student in the research class doesn't do all of the little assignments leading up to the big paper, they are either recycling a paper from another class or procuring the work in some other academically dishonest way. Perhaps Julio was just way behind. If only he had admitted that fact, promised to spend all of Thanksgiving break catching up, and brought me the work next week, I would have accepted it. But believing that I should be satisfied if he just claimed he did the work was unforgivably bad behavior.

If only students had the sense to manipulate their instructors more intelligently, both their lives and mine would be less frustrating!

And the Award for Best Performance in Front of a Skeptical Faculty Member Goes to ...

2006-11-10T11:52:00.000-05:00

The theatrics started 48 hours before the official withdrawal deadline. Tiffany, the first actress, hadn't bothered to read the policy in the syllabus, which states that students have a one-week grace period before I start penalizing late work. Her assignment was only two days late, not a matter of concern to me. Tiffany, however, was sure that she would earn a zero, so she began the performance by telling me that her best friend, after hanging on in the hospital for two days, had died that morning, the victim of a horrible automobile accident.

Now the local news here in Central Florida loves deadly car crashes, especially when a twenty something is fighting for life, giving the reporters time to analyze the accident and assign blame. If the young woman was at fault because of booze, pills, or the inability to pilot the huge SUV her parents bought for her birthday, we would have seen cops declaring the senselessness of the death. If she was the victim of someone else's drunkenness or inattention, the reporters would have broadcast family members crying for justice or weeping friends dropping off teddy bears at the roadside memorial. As a local news junkie, I had heard nothing of such an accident. The late piece that Tiffany delivered was polished, not the type of incoherent writing I would expect from someone who had just observed her best friend's death. The laser jet printing hadn't run from dripped tears.

Julio, the second actor, dashed to my office three minutes after I sent him an email warning of unsatisfactory progress. He must have been sitting at a computer on campus, updating his MySpace account or playing internet poker, not producing work he owed me, as he arrived empty handed. Although he had been an impressive student as we satisfied the literature component of the class, he was falling apart during the big research project. He was missing many assignments on top of being absent in class for the last week. Julio's performance in my office included a long monologue about Grandma. She hadn't died, but his family had learned that she was in a hospital in Columbia, about to expire from a heart attack. So the entire family had driven to Miami to catch the first flight to their home country. Before boarding the airplane, they learned that Grandma just had a bad bout of gas, nothing a Bean-O couldn't solve. Miami is three hours away by car, so how all of this drama had consumed an entire week he didn't explain. I was unable to sustain my disbelief during the performance.

Shortly after, Gerald, another nominee for best lie told to explain late work, appeared in my doorway, his open laptop in hand. "Professor Lightbulb," he panted, having run from somewhere, "how much do you know about computers?" Well, young man, quite a bit. Haven't you seen me demonstrate a range of multimedia presentations, all of which you know I created and then post to the course blog for your out-of-class download pleasure? Haven't you watched me fix problems after the AV guys throw up their hands in defeat? So I guess that you can surmise that I know quite a bit about computers.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"I have the work I owe you--I mean, I wrote it--and I saved it, but it's not anywhere on my computer!"

He offered me the laptop as if the computer alone could fill the zeros in my grade book. When I opened Word, there were no recent documents opened or saved. The computer was either brand new or not used for writing papers. Gerald continued to pant while I ran a quick search. The heavy breathing added to my annoyance, not my sympathy. "There's nothing here," I said.

"But I saved it!" he emphasized. Despite the histrionics, I found the performance unconvincing.

My best actress--utilizing all of her high school drama club training--gave her elaborate performance in class with an audience of peers. She too owed me a number of assignments; her excuse was that a recent illness had put her way behind in all of her classes. She sat in class and fake sniffled and coughed. All the while, she crumpled tissues which formed a ring around her computer keyboard. Everyone in the room knew that she wasn't really sick because she couldn't get enough juiciness going to be truly convincing. But she would win an award for set decoration, for I found the ring of crumpled tissues an effective visual for her snow job.

This semester had been going so well that I wasn't counting down the days to Thanksgiving as I usually do at this time of year. I was enjoying my students and happy with their progress. I wasn't expecting scintillating research from them, but I did believe that they would continue to crank out the competent efforts that I had grown accustomed to.

But when students start putting their energy into lame performances instead of completing their work, they start to disappoint me. I wish that they would try honesty for a change: "Professor Lightbulb, I am a lazy slacker [or desperately trying to catch up in calculus, or working on a big group project in US Government, or whatever] and I have fallen behind. I promise that I'll have the work I owe you by _____." I would love some refreshing truth. I might even use the line my undergrad professors often used on me: "Oh, that's okay. Your writing is worth waiting for!"