On the cusp

On the cusp of a new semester. It's just before 9:00 p.m., the night before classes begin for Fall term at SU! I am rediscovering my blog and reacquainting myself with the fact that I haven't written anything in it since early January. To quote my previous post, I am a blog loser! Well, no more....I am now entering a new era of blog-engaged life this term.

I've made the bold move of asking graduate students in CCR 601 to blog their reading notes and responses to class readings and general thoughts related to getting acquainted or better acquainted with Rhetoric and Composition as a field. Perhaps they will rebel tomorrow when I make this announcement. Perhaps they will yawn and look bored or arch their eyebrows and say "But of course we're going to keep blogs. We've been doing it for the past five years..."

I've been visiting Derek's blog Earth Wide Moth and watching his exam preparations and reading notes emerge, and I'm thinking it will be useful for 601 AND for me. I am planning on blogging 601 notes and questions, but I'd also like to blog about my book _New Agrarian Rhetorics_, which I worked on this summer.

I feel compelled here to briefly recount "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," the favored theme topic of the last 100 years, but I don't have the energy to write a witty account that reveals my complete. Nevertheless, some highlights:

--Played with Autumn! She is 3 1/2 feet tall now. She has a short hair cut, and she is ready to go to kindergarten but is 34 days too late with her birthday to make the cut-off. She went back to SU daycare today, and all is well.
--Worked with Kim Donehower and Charlotte Hogg to finish up and submit _Rural Literacies_ manuscript to Southern Illinois University Press.
--Worked on my book _New Agrarian Rhetorics_. I have a prospectus and some chapters hammered out.
--Took a trip with Tom and Autumn to visit family and friends out in Washington State. The Schells were chosen as the "Founding Family" for the Founders' Day celebration in my hometown: Cashmere, WA. Every year they honor a family that has been in the area for a long time. Fifty of the Schells and Schell-related and affiliated showed up to ride on cars and trailers down the parade route and wave at the locals. It was definitely a Sinclair Lewis moment.
--On a more sober note, my Mom underwent breast cancer treatments at the Wenatchee Valley Clinic Oncology Center in Wenatchee, WA. She had six weeks of radiation this summer preceded by a lupectomy. I was glad I could be there for several weeks of the treatments. She is feeling well and doing a lot of gardening now that the treatments are over. We are hopeful that this will be her only bout with cancer.
--Tom, Autumn, and I visited our friends Laura Roskos and Martin O'Brien in Cambridge, Mass and visited their parents' home near Falmouth, Mass. A big highlight was going with Martin's Dad to a local anti-war protest. Martin's father is a WWII veteran and ex-POW. His B-17 was shot-down behind enemy lines, and he was imprisoned in Germany. His time in the camps made a peace activist out of him. He is in his eighties now and avidly attends peace vigils every week in front of the Falmouth post office. I got to stand there with him at one of the Saturday vigils. His "Veterans Against the War" t-shirt provoked many interesting conversations with passersby.
--Kim VanAlkemade and her daughter Alex Hovet (age 14) came to visit us in early August. We're already trying to recruit Alex for SU.
--Worked with Susan and Jen on their dissertation projects and attended the CCR dissertation writing group. It was a pleasurable dissertation summer.
--Grew the usual backyard garden. Bumper crops: mixed lettuce, spinach, tomatoes. Second string crops: green onions, dill, basil, and pumpkins (I hope). I'm having no luck with broccoli--planted too late. My flower garden this year was both annuals and perennials. I have Dahlias and Gladiolas coming up. The perennials are a sign that I'm settling down in Syracuse. I even have a 10 year pin from the university to prove it.
--Trained for and Ran a 5k race--the Willow Bay Women's 5k on Aug. 19. I even ran intervals to prepare for it (400 meter repeats at the Nottingham track several times). I'm happy I did it, but I realize that being a "master's runner" (runner over 40) means confronting one's slower times. What happened to the 20 minute times of my late teens and early 20s? As John Bingham, the running columnist "The Penguin" says, "Waddle on friends."
--Diane (Grimes) and I continue to make our three-day a week sojourn to the gym, joining the ranks of the faculty mafia trying to infiltrate Archbold.

I'm sure there is more to talk about, but...it's time to put Autumn to bed.