van Georgia is officieel niet meer populair bij ons op de campus. Toegegeven, nu was de beste man dat waarschijnlijk toch al niet echt. Ik bedoel, met een naam als "Sonny", een accent dat het beste als "white southern" beschreven kan worden, en een Republikeins beleid was de beste man toch nooit echt ver gekomen op een HBCU. Maar goed, sinds vanochtend heeft hij het helemaal verprutst. Er zijn, voor het zuiden, harde woorden gevallen zoals "belachelijk", "volslagen onverantwoord", en zelfs het uiterst beledigende "niet over nagedacht". En dat allemaal omdat de budgetbesprekingen voor FY 2011 (aankomend academiejaar) in volle gang zijn, en vanochtend er berichten zijn uitgelekt over wat men allemaal van plan is. En dat die plannen minder dan ideaal zijn, dat is duidelijk.
Vanochtend heeft ons department in de maandelijkse vergadering mogen vernemen wat de opties zijn die gisteren in een grote vergadering zijn ontwikkeld. Ik zal ze aan u voorleggen.
Optie 1: De school gaat een 4-daagse week, en gaat voor de andere drie dagen op slot. Dat zou betekenen, geen football, geen track, geen sport in het algemeen meer. Want die wedstrijden zijn meestal in het weekend. Op zich zagen wij, als rasechte academici dat wel zitten. Football is leuk hoor, daar niet van, maar om een coach nou zes ton aan salaris te betalen, en honderd duizenden dollars te spenderen aan de reiskosten van het team, dat niet meer doet dan een balletje achter na zitten, nee, het nut daarvan ontgaat het overgrote deel van mijn collega's. Toegegeven, nu zijn de meeste van ons zover gekomen omdat we ronduit slecht waren in sport, daardoor nooit vriendjes hadden, en dus maar gingen lezen in onze vrije tijd. Dus de kans bestaat dat onze anitpathie tegen sport misschien niet geheel gebaseerd is op een goed gefundeerde redenering. Maar dan nog, een universiteit is om te le-ren. Niet om te spe-len. Wij waren dus al helemaal in onze nopjes. We zouden en geld besparen, en geen last meer hebben van studenten ziek, zwak, en misselijk zijn op de maandagochtenden na een belangrijke footballwedstrijd. Ideaal.
Maar, helaas. Want, zo had de chancellor in al zijn wijsheid bedacht, wie niet werkt, die wordt niet betaald. En dus zou dit plan ook in houden dat alle medewerkers nog maar voor vier dagen betaald worden. Omdat het bij mij even duurde voordat dit in nummertjes omgezet was, zal ik het u maar meteen vertellen, dat is een verlies in salaris van 20%. Twin-tig Pro-cent. Een-vijfde. Nu verdien ik niet zo schokkend veel hoor, maar twintig procent? Dat is toch wel heftig.
In een keer waren we bekomen van onze liefde voor optie 1, en wilde toch wel heel graag horen wat er achter deur twee zit. En dat was nog minder fraai.
Optie 2: Een andere manier om te bezuigingen is natuurlijk het niet meer doen van bepaalde dingen. Als je het niet doet, dan kost het ook niets. Is een hele simpele economische gedachtengang. En dat moet men gisteren ook gedacht hebben. En dus is optie 2 het afschaffen van verschillende academische programma's, zoals: alle vreemde talen, een groot deel van de bibliotheek, alle writing labs, een aantal van de master's programma's, een gedeelte van de campus politie, alle adjunct docenten, het global intiative office, bezuigingen op stookkosten en nog veel meer.
Nu bent u misschien geen academicus, maar u kunt zich voorstellen dat na deze uitspraak, er een ware revolutie dreigde uit te breken. Voor een academicus is een bibliotheek nog net niet zo belangrijk als ademhalen, maar het komt erg dicht in de buurt. En het afschaffen van alle writing labs? Nu zouden we de achterstand, veroorzaakt door het tekort van writing programs in high school, hetgeen weer voor een gedeelte veroorzaakt wordt door de budget problemen daar, nooit kunnen inhalen. Een geen vreemde talen meer? Een aantal collega's uit Zuid Amerika kregen zowaar een rolberoerte. Of de master's in nursing afschaffen, welke net bekroond was met allerlei prijzen en awards? Om dan nog maar niet te spreken over wat "bezuinigen op stookkosten" zou gaan inhouden. Zouden we nog maar twee uur per dag de airco aan mogen hebben? Of zouden de lichten op de WCs op een timer gezet worden ("de gemiddelde vrouw heeft twee minuten nodig op de badkamer, dus opschieten"). Kortom. Het was een drama.
Maar onze vakgroepsvoorzitter had een derde voorstel gedaan, gisteren. Hij had voorgesteld dat we 'slechts' 12% van ons salaris zouden verliezen, en dat we een aantal non-academische programma's zouden schrappen. Welke, dat was niet duidelijk, maar een collega riep heel assertief dat het consultancy bureau dat volgens een vorig agendapunt in dienst was genomen om de universiteit meer efficienter te maken als eerste er uit kon, "And then if we just fire all the stupid people, we'll be done!".
Dat is de oplossing natuurlijk. We ontslaan gewoon alle mensen die wel de tijd hebben om elke dag een uur te lunchen. Die niks beters te doen hebben dan een formulier acht keer terug te sturen omdat er elke keer iets net niet helemaal goed is. Die studenten van het kasje naar de muur sturen. En die maandenlang bezig zijn met allerlei budgetplannen te ontwikkelen die vergeten waar het bij een universiteit om draait. Als die mensen nou allemaal verdwijnen, dan kunnen we ons eindelijk gaan richten waar het werkelijk om draait hier, en dat is, allemaal tegelijk nu: on-der-wijs (eigenlijk is het natuurlijk het vergaren en verspreiden van academische kennis, maar ja, dat bekt niet zo lekker).
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Imprisoned minds, free bodies
It's midterms once again. Everyone's nerves are frayed, and the students are no different. Yesterday, however, proved especially difficult. The high, or low, point of the day was when students proved immune to my attempts to engage them in a critical discussion of Sartre, the number one atheist philosopher, and one student had the audacity to say, "Look, can we just learn the material, and stop talking about it, and move on to the next guy, because we're all Christians so this isn't going to work". I went home late, feeling frustrated and burnt out. What is the point of teaching, of pouring my soul into relaying knowledge, of trying to inspire critical thought when the majority of my students just don't seem to care? I was left wondering if perhaps I should follow my student's advice, and show up, run my lecture, and leave. But I quickly realized I couldn't. I still care too much about my students' success. But then how to deal with this total apathy?
When considering solutions, my mind almost always wanders to the reasons behind this behavior too. Is this something only my students do? Is it a southern thing? A result of our less-than-perfect secondary education? Or is it part of a wider social epidemic?
A co-worker pointed me to an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It doesn't solve my problems, it doesn't even point to the reason, but it perfectly reflects my own experience, assuring me that this apathy is not my fault, not the result of my poor teaching methods, and maybe something that can't be fixed it all. But although the article made me feel better knowing that I'm not alone, it is also disheartening to discover that perhaps yesterday's class is not an isolated incident.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
This is the article my co-worker sent me:
"On Lecturing in a Prison, Where Minds Are Free
By Jefferson Cowie
On a sweltering afternoon last August, I had the professional thrill of giving one of the kickoff lectures of Cornell's New Student Reading Project, an annual effort to knit the entire campus together in the shared intellectual experience of reading a single book. The uncomfortably hot crowd of thousands of students and faculty members assembled in the field house was the largest gathering I had ever addressed, complete with big-screen projections of the lecturers, like academic rock stars, floating over the stage.
The topic was close to my heart: my favorite character, Tom Joad, grappling with the teachings of Preacher Casey, from one of my favorite books, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The issues of migration and family, environment and social crisis, economic calamity and occupational justice, it seemed to me, made the book extraordinarily relevant to the problems of today.
Then in October, I gave the talk again. I shivered more from nervousness than the cool autumn air as I entered another strangely cavernous space—an almost 200-year-old maximum-security prison, Auburn Correctional Facility. Behind fortresslike walls rising above the small, historic town of Auburn, the state of New York incarcerates its murderers, thieves, and gangsters; put the first electric chair to use; and still stamps out license plates. As I worked my way through security to the prison chapel, I couldn't help recalling that the central characters of my talk had done time for murder and spent much of the book in violent scrapes with the law, much like those people I was about to address.
On the Cornell campus, every time I'd attended the huge opening of the reading project, I was struck by the students' indifference and boredom. Whether the book was by Sophocles or Garry Wills, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Jared Diamond, the students seemed incapable of engaging with the lectures. A colleague blogged: "I saw students asleep, milling about, talking on their cellphones, texting, talking and laughing with others, and what seemed to be a precious few engaged by the presentations." The students' restlessness led him to ask them, "What are you doing here at Cornell?"
The inmates who filtered into the prison chapel, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing at Auburn Correctional Facility: hard time, often for violent crimes they had committed when they were quite young. I arrived skeptical that my presentation would mean anything to them; I was motivated more by curiosity and civic obligation than grand pedagogic hopes. Clearly, these guys had bigger problems than literature and history.
The 60 inmates enrolled in the Cornell Prison Education Program were, in contrast to the Cornell students, hardly bored, restless, or indifferent. They were on fire. They sat attentively without PowerPoint photos to keep them entertained, autumn walks through the gorges to look forward to, or fancy careers to anticipate. They occasionally tossed questions to me during my talk, testing my mettle. Then, when I finished, their hands shot up. For the next hour, I got a vigorous intellectual workout—an exhausting barrage of questions any teacher would relish.
The questions came from every direction. How could Tom Joad, asked one, be the quintessential American working-class hero (as I had suggested) if Steinbeck had ignored the Asian and Mexican workers who had done most of the agricultural labor in California? Another, responding to how land got used in Oklahoma and California, asked if the constitutional system functioned in a way that enforced inequality. When I showed how Okie iconography was used in advertising and television in the postwar era, another asked if advertising and consumption were designed to prevent popular revolts. An inmate even asked whether the dollar was grounded in human labor, and whether human labor can be considered a commodity like any other.
One prisoner asked a multipart question that I did not fully grasp. I dismissed part of it and moved on, but his hand went back up. Though it was rough around the edges, in academic parlance his question was this: Was the type of civil society that Preacher Casey struggled for ("Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of") possible, given the social atomization brought about by computers and technology?
I turned my head to the program's director, Jim Schechter, with an incredulous look—was this for real?
Before the night was over, the inmates' questions had me delving into constitutional theory, Lockean property rights, spirituality, political dissent, the tensions between civil rights and economic rights, and the use of state power. Granted, there were a lot of grandstanding, polemics, and semiarticulated ideas floating around, but these guys were serious about what they were doing. At one point, carried away with the moment, I even delivered a spontaneous mini-lecture on Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, which had been scrawled on scraps of paper while he was imprisoned in Fascist Italy. Gramsci tried to figure out, I told the prisoners, how market culture creates a common sense that ensures the consent of the governed. They murmured. They nodded. They got it. Rarely had I felt so alive as a teacher.
After each of the big panels at Cornell, a small handful of the several thousand students would come up to ask the panelists follow-up questions. In fact, the open-mike question period of previous years had been eliminated because the bulk of students used the opportunity to make a quick exit. After the prison talk, in contrast, the men filed up to introduce themselves, thank me for coming, and ask if I'd teach a class in the program. Most simply looked me in the eye with affirmation, shook my hand, and headed back to their cells. Their humility was humbling.
I wondered if it was simply the boredom and constraint of prison life that had the prison students so motivated; the well-prepped Cornell kids, of course, had every media device and distraction imaginable to draw them away from us droning professors. Maybe the Cornell students had worked so hard to get in that they now felt complacent, having made the grade. Maybe the Cornell kids were indifferent because the reading project was not a graded assignment.
Yet the prisoners had also studied hard to get into the prison-education program. They were not simply looking for ways to pass time. They had other things to distract them if they chose, and they attended graded classes as well. My lecture had been purely voluntary for them.
The experience at Auburn got me thinking about entitlement, motivation, and the life of the mind. It forced me to ask troubling questions about status and reward in our academic system. It made me wonder what I was doing with my life and my career, now in midpassage. The contrast between the free minds of the imprisoned bodies at Auburn and the imprisoned minds of the free bodies among some of the nation's most gifted college students could not have been more stark.
Marcus Rediker, a visiting scholar at Cornell last year, also gave a lecture at Auburn, on slave ships. I heard that he rocked the house (the inmates do, after all, call Auburn the "slave ship"). Summing up his experience, he reported: "Most of all, I was impressed by the intelligence, the thoughtfulness, the engagement, the curiosity—in short, by the life of the mind—that I found among the people inside Auburn Prison. That mind, I am pleased to report, cannot be imprisoned."
I wondered what the bars were made of that seemed to imprison my Cornell students, and what it would take for them to begin emancipating themselves.
Jefferson Cowie is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. His latest book, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, is due out from the New Press in September."
(source: Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2010)
When considering solutions, my mind almost always wanders to the reasons behind this behavior too. Is this something only my students do? Is it a southern thing? A result of our less-than-perfect secondary education? Or is it part of a wider social epidemic?
A co-worker pointed me to an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It doesn't solve my problems, it doesn't even point to the reason, but it perfectly reflects my own experience, assuring me that this apathy is not my fault, not the result of my poor teaching methods, and maybe something that can't be fixed it all. But although the article made me feel better knowing that I'm not alone, it is also disheartening to discover that perhaps yesterday's class is not an isolated incident.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
This is the article my co-worker sent me:
"On Lecturing in a Prison, Where Minds Are Free
By Jefferson Cowie
On a sweltering afternoon last August, I had the professional thrill of giving one of the kickoff lectures of Cornell's New Student Reading Project, an annual effort to knit the entire campus together in the shared intellectual experience of reading a single book. The uncomfortably hot crowd of thousands of students and faculty members assembled in the field house was the largest gathering I had ever addressed, complete with big-screen projections of the lecturers, like academic rock stars, floating over the stage.
The topic was close to my heart: my favorite character, Tom Joad, grappling with the teachings of Preacher Casey, from one of my favorite books, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The issues of migration and family, environment and social crisis, economic calamity and occupational justice, it seemed to me, made the book extraordinarily relevant to the problems of today.
Then in October, I gave the talk again. I shivered more from nervousness than the cool autumn air as I entered another strangely cavernous space—an almost 200-year-old maximum-security prison, Auburn Correctional Facility. Behind fortresslike walls rising above the small, historic town of Auburn, the state of New York incarcerates its murderers, thieves, and gangsters; put the first electric chair to use; and still stamps out license plates. As I worked my way through security to the prison chapel, I couldn't help recalling that the central characters of my talk had done time for murder and spent much of the book in violent scrapes with the law, much like those people I was about to address.
On the Cornell campus, every time I'd attended the huge opening of the reading project, I was struck by the students' indifference and boredom. Whether the book was by Sophocles or Garry Wills, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Jared Diamond, the students seemed incapable of engaging with the lectures. A colleague blogged: "I saw students asleep, milling about, talking on their cellphones, texting, talking and laughing with others, and what seemed to be a precious few engaged by the presentations." The students' restlessness led him to ask them, "What are you doing here at Cornell?"
The inmates who filtered into the prison chapel, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing at Auburn Correctional Facility: hard time, often for violent crimes they had committed when they were quite young. I arrived skeptical that my presentation would mean anything to them; I was motivated more by curiosity and civic obligation than grand pedagogic hopes. Clearly, these guys had bigger problems than literature and history.
The 60 inmates enrolled in the Cornell Prison Education Program were, in contrast to the Cornell students, hardly bored, restless, or indifferent. They were on fire. They sat attentively without PowerPoint photos to keep them entertained, autumn walks through the gorges to look forward to, or fancy careers to anticipate. They occasionally tossed questions to me during my talk, testing my mettle. Then, when I finished, their hands shot up. For the next hour, I got a vigorous intellectual workout—an exhausting barrage of questions any teacher would relish.
The questions came from every direction. How could Tom Joad, asked one, be the quintessential American working-class hero (as I had suggested) if Steinbeck had ignored the Asian and Mexican workers who had done most of the agricultural labor in California? Another, responding to how land got used in Oklahoma and California, asked if the constitutional system functioned in a way that enforced inequality. When I showed how Okie iconography was used in advertising and television in the postwar era, another asked if advertising and consumption were designed to prevent popular revolts. An inmate even asked whether the dollar was grounded in human labor, and whether human labor can be considered a commodity like any other.
One prisoner asked a multipart question that I did not fully grasp. I dismissed part of it and moved on, but his hand went back up. Though it was rough around the edges, in academic parlance his question was this: Was the type of civil society that Preacher Casey struggled for ("Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of") possible, given the social atomization brought about by computers and technology?
I turned my head to the program's director, Jim Schechter, with an incredulous look—was this for real?
Before the night was over, the inmates' questions had me delving into constitutional theory, Lockean property rights, spirituality, political dissent, the tensions between civil rights and economic rights, and the use of state power. Granted, there were a lot of grandstanding, polemics, and semiarticulated ideas floating around, but these guys were serious about what they were doing. At one point, carried away with the moment, I even delivered a spontaneous mini-lecture on Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, which had been scrawled on scraps of paper while he was imprisoned in Fascist Italy. Gramsci tried to figure out, I told the prisoners, how market culture creates a common sense that ensures the consent of the governed. They murmured. They nodded. They got it. Rarely had I felt so alive as a teacher.
After each of the big panels at Cornell, a small handful of the several thousand students would come up to ask the panelists follow-up questions. In fact, the open-mike question period of previous years had been eliminated because the bulk of students used the opportunity to make a quick exit. After the prison talk, in contrast, the men filed up to introduce themselves, thank me for coming, and ask if I'd teach a class in the program. Most simply looked me in the eye with affirmation, shook my hand, and headed back to their cells. Their humility was humbling.
I wondered if it was simply the boredom and constraint of prison life that had the prison students so motivated; the well-prepped Cornell kids, of course, had every media device and distraction imaginable to draw them away from us droning professors. Maybe the Cornell students had worked so hard to get in that they now felt complacent, having made the grade. Maybe the Cornell kids were indifferent because the reading project was not a graded assignment.
Yet the prisoners had also studied hard to get into the prison-education program. They were not simply looking for ways to pass time. They had other things to distract them if they chose, and they attended graded classes as well. My lecture had been purely voluntary for them.
The experience at Auburn got me thinking about entitlement, motivation, and the life of the mind. It forced me to ask troubling questions about status and reward in our academic system. It made me wonder what I was doing with my life and my career, now in midpassage. The contrast between the free minds of the imprisoned bodies at Auburn and the imprisoned minds of the free bodies among some of the nation's most gifted college students could not have been more stark.
Marcus Rediker, a visiting scholar at Cornell last year, also gave a lecture at Auburn, on slave ships. I heard that he rocked the house (the inmates do, after all, call Auburn the "slave ship"). Summing up his experience, he reported: "Most of all, I was impressed by the intelligence, the thoughtfulness, the engagement, the curiosity—in short, by the life of the mind—that I found among the people inside Auburn Prison. That mind, I am pleased to report, cannot be imprisoned."
I wondered what the bars were made of that seemed to imprison my Cornell students, and what it would take for them to begin emancipating themselves.
Jefferson Cowie is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. His latest book, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, is due out from the New Press in September."
(source: Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2010)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A little dictator
When I first started taking education classes, one of the main critiques my instructors always gave me was that I needed to allow for more student interaction. So throughout my years of teaching, I have always made it a point to open the floor up for class discussion. I have even gone as far as to put remarks like "ask class!" or "discuss!" in my lecture notes. And all in all, I like to think I've been doing OK.
Granted, when teaching graduate students, leading a class discussion is easy. These are students who know their material, who have completed the reading, and who really, and I mean, really, like the topic at hand. Why else would they be forking over thousands of dollars when they have already have one college degree gracing their walls?
Teaching an undergraduates can be much more of a challenge though. An instructor will generally face one of two problems. One, the students just don't care. They don't see the relevance of understanding the intricacies of measuring construct validity, it's ten in the morning, and the Alphas threw a rocking party the night before. Trying to start a class discussion with students like that is like pulling on taffy. Or, and this is the complete opposite, the students are dying to share their very personal opinion and accompanying anecdotes, in spite of not having read the assigned text, checking their Facebook status while you were lecturing, and whispering with their neighbor while you introduced the discussion topic.
So in recent years, having a class discussion has been painful. And today was no different. Even though I repeatedly told students they needed to "summarize, synthesize, and analyze", many of them felt that any comment that started with, "Well, I just think you're wrong.." was a valuable contribution.
It gets old.
Sometimes, I just let the class rant for a few minutes, and then reel them back in, closing the discussion. Other times, I try to steer their energy in a more academic discussion, and sometimes, I just tell them they need to think before they speak. A tactic that would probably have my old instructors frown. Frown very deeply. Today, however, I opted for a completely different tactic: I turned into a dictator.
You see, I'm all for class discussion. Positive, constructive, well-thought out class discussion. I don't care to hear people's opinions. And I especially don't care when people who have not read the text, did not pay attention in class, and whose current midterm grade hovers somewhere around a D, openly question whether the research I present is "true" using anecdotes from their personal life. Besides having obviously missed the discussion on "truth" and its non-existence in research, these students just get on my nerves. Especially when they proceed to interrupt me, and not listen to my counterarguments.
Today one student went to a whole new level when he accused me of not letting him finish an argument centered on his personal life that would undermine a specific, well-recognized theory, which he was now reiterating for the fourth time. It usually takes a lot to really tick me off, but this specific student managed to do it. And I wanted to really squash him, but you know, I can't. It's against the law and his parents would get upset. So instead I said:
"So, tell me, who gets paid for teaching here? Is that you, or me? Because I could have sworn I got a paycheck last month, but you know, I could be wrong."
Yeah. Not nice. Not good. Definitely not pedagogically sound. And definitely not what a mature professor should say. But you know what? I don't care. Not anymore. No more Dr. Nice. We are now no longer a democracy. My classroom is my kingdom, and I am the queen.
Although personally, I prefer "Dr. Dictator".
Do you think that means I get to collect 3000 pairs of shoes too?
Granted, when teaching graduate students, leading a class discussion is easy. These are students who know their material, who have completed the reading, and who really, and I mean, really, like the topic at hand. Why else would they be forking over thousands of dollars when they have already have one college degree gracing their walls?
Teaching an undergraduates can be much more of a challenge though. An instructor will generally face one of two problems. One, the students just don't care. They don't see the relevance of understanding the intricacies of measuring construct validity, it's ten in the morning, and the Alphas threw a rocking party the night before. Trying to start a class discussion with students like that is like pulling on taffy. Or, and this is the complete opposite, the students are dying to share their very personal opinion and accompanying anecdotes, in spite of not having read the assigned text, checking their Facebook status while you were lecturing, and whispering with their neighbor while you introduced the discussion topic.
So in recent years, having a class discussion has been painful. And today was no different. Even though I repeatedly told students they needed to "summarize, synthesize, and analyze", many of them felt that any comment that started with, "Well, I just think you're wrong.." was a valuable contribution.
It gets old.
Sometimes, I just let the class rant for a few minutes, and then reel them back in, closing the discussion. Other times, I try to steer their energy in a more academic discussion, and sometimes, I just tell them they need to think before they speak. A tactic that would probably have my old instructors frown. Frown very deeply. Today, however, I opted for a completely different tactic: I turned into a dictator.
You see, I'm all for class discussion. Positive, constructive, well-thought out class discussion. I don't care to hear people's opinions. And I especially don't care when people who have not read the text, did not pay attention in class, and whose current midterm grade hovers somewhere around a D, openly question whether the research I present is "true" using anecdotes from their personal life. Besides having obviously missed the discussion on "truth" and its non-existence in research, these students just get on my nerves. Especially when they proceed to interrupt me, and not listen to my counterarguments.
Today one student went to a whole new level when he accused me of not letting him finish an argument centered on his personal life that would undermine a specific, well-recognized theory, which he was now reiterating for the fourth time. It usually takes a lot to really tick me off, but this specific student managed to do it. And I wanted to really squash him, but you know, I can't. It's against the law and his parents would get upset. So instead I said:
"So, tell me, who gets paid for teaching here? Is that you, or me? Because I could have sworn I got a paycheck last month, but you know, I could be wrong."
Yeah. Not nice. Not good. Definitely not pedagogically sound. And definitely not what a mature professor should say. But you know what? I don't care. Not anymore. No more Dr. Nice. We are now no longer a democracy. My classroom is my kingdom, and I am the queen.
Although personally, I prefer "Dr. Dictator".
Do you think that means I get to collect 3000 pairs of shoes too?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
De Fietsende Llama
Vanochtend was het sinds December eindelijk zo ver: manlief en ik konden een lange fietstocht maken. Voor het eerst in weken lag er geen sneeuw, liep het kwik niet onder nul, en was er geen snijdende wind die koud genoeg was om de edele delen van een aap af te doen vriezen. Nee, vanochtend was het zo'n dertien graden, windstil, en het zonnetje scheen. Manlief en ik waren dus in onze nopjes.
Ik ben echter wel achter een groot nadeel van fietsen met lekker weer gekomen: alle honden langs onze route liggen ook weer buiten. Lagen deze harige viervoeters in de vrieskou van November en December nog binnen voor de open haard te ronken, nu was het blijkbaar warm genoeg voor hen om weer lekker buiten in de tuin rond te dartelen. Een tuin waar negen van de tien keer geen hek om heen zit. En een tuin die meestal aan de straat grenst. Waar manlief en ik op fietsen.
Uiteraard heb ik niks tegen honden. Ik vind het geweldige knuffelbeesten, en als het mij lag zouden we een huis vol hebben (nou ja, als het aan niet clean-freakige mij lag). Maar ik vind honden toch beduidend minder wanneer ik met zo'n twintig mijl per uur kom aanrijden, en de fiere viervoeters blij gelukkig bijna voor mijn fiets springen. Als ik met dertig mijl per uur een heuvel afsuis, en er komt dan zo'n klein monster uit een oprit gesuist, dan slaat mijn onvrede al snel om in een lichte vorm van hysterie. Er komt namelijk een keer een dag, dat beloof ik u, dat ik met fiets en al over de kop sla omdat een hijgende chihuaua niet doorheeft dat ik niet op een dubbeltje stil kan staan.
Nu moet u weten dan onze hele county een "leash law"heeft, wat zoveel inhoudt als dat mensen hun hond, jawel, aan de lijn moeten houden. Alleen moet u ook weten dat het overgrote deel van onze county uit backroads and boonies bestaat, en dat geen hond (sorry) daar iets zal eggen van een loslopende, ahum, hond. Veel mensen hebben zelfs meerdere honden (gezellig!), en laten die soms dag en nacht buiten rond struinen als een soort beveiliging slash ongediertebestrijding slash methode om hun huis schoon te houden. Dus als fietser heb je gewoon pech gehad.
Nu heeft onze lokale fietswinkel een geweldig product voor precies dit soort problemen. Het heet "dog off", of zoiets onschuldigs, en is een mengsel van citroenwater dat in een klein spuitbusje zit. De bedoeling is dat je het in de ogen van de hond spuit, die dan spontaan denkt dat-ie doodgaat, en dus subiet ophoudt met jou, en je fiets, te achtervolgen. Ik heb het vorig jaar, na een hartverlammend incident met de poedel van een paar straten verderop gekocht, maar eigenlijk nog nooit gebruikt. Weet u, ik vind het namelijk zielig. Nu is het dat helemaal niet (in ieder geval volgens onze lokale shelter-mevrouw), want de hond merkt het na een paar minuten al niet meer, maar toch. Ik vind het gewoon niet aardig. Daarbij komt het probleem dat je dat spul echt niet op je eigen gezicht wil krijgen, en sja, om nou eerst de windrichting te meten, en dan pas de hond te grazen te nemen, dat is ook zo wat. En daarbij, ik vergeet dat ding altijd.
Dus het was tijd voor een nieuwe oplossing. En laten we die vandaag nou eens ontdekt hebben. Spuug.
Ja, serieus, gewoon spugen. Naar de hond. Ze schrikken zich helemaal te pletter, en gaan daarna zoeken waar je spuug terecht is gekomen zodat ze dat fijn kunnen besnuffelen, terwijl jij als fietser lekker door kan peddelen. Ideaal.
Vandaag heb ik dus op alle honden gespuugd. Ik schat dat ik zo'n vijftien keer "getuft"heb, op een ritje van 25 mijl. Persoonlijk heb ik volgens mij in heel mijn leven bij elkaar nog niet eens vijftien keer gespuugd, maar goed. Dat record is nu dus wel verbroken. En zo ook mijn imago van net meisje. Ik ben in feite een llama op een fiets geworden. Trap, trap, trap, hond, spuug, trap, trap, trap, trap, hond, spuug, hond, spuug, spuug. Ranzig, maar het werkt. Misschien moet ik dat maar eens in een potje stoppen en op de markt brengen. Wie weet.
Ik ben echter wel achter een groot nadeel van fietsen met lekker weer gekomen: alle honden langs onze route liggen ook weer buiten. Lagen deze harige viervoeters in de vrieskou van November en December nog binnen voor de open haard te ronken, nu was het blijkbaar warm genoeg voor hen om weer lekker buiten in de tuin rond te dartelen. Een tuin waar negen van de tien keer geen hek om heen zit. En een tuin die meestal aan de straat grenst. Waar manlief en ik op fietsen.
Uiteraard heb ik niks tegen honden. Ik vind het geweldige knuffelbeesten, en als het mij lag zouden we een huis vol hebben (nou ja, als het aan niet clean-freakige mij lag). Maar ik vind honden toch beduidend minder wanneer ik met zo'n twintig mijl per uur kom aanrijden, en de fiere viervoeters blij gelukkig bijna voor mijn fiets springen. Als ik met dertig mijl per uur een heuvel afsuis, en er komt dan zo'n klein monster uit een oprit gesuist, dan slaat mijn onvrede al snel om in een lichte vorm van hysterie. Er komt namelijk een keer een dag, dat beloof ik u, dat ik met fiets en al over de kop sla omdat een hijgende chihuaua niet doorheeft dat ik niet op een dubbeltje stil kan staan.
Nu moet u weten dan onze hele county een "leash law"heeft, wat zoveel inhoudt als dat mensen hun hond, jawel, aan de lijn moeten houden. Alleen moet u ook weten dat het overgrote deel van onze county uit backroads and boonies bestaat, en dat geen hond (sorry) daar iets zal eggen van een loslopende, ahum, hond. Veel mensen hebben zelfs meerdere honden (gezellig!), en laten die soms dag en nacht buiten rond struinen als een soort beveiliging slash ongediertebestrijding slash methode om hun huis schoon te houden. Dus als fietser heb je gewoon pech gehad.
Nu heeft onze lokale fietswinkel een geweldig product voor precies dit soort problemen. Het heet "dog off", of zoiets onschuldigs, en is een mengsel van citroenwater dat in een klein spuitbusje zit. De bedoeling is dat je het in de ogen van de hond spuit, die dan spontaan denkt dat-ie doodgaat, en dus subiet ophoudt met jou, en je fiets, te achtervolgen. Ik heb het vorig jaar, na een hartverlammend incident met de poedel van een paar straten verderop gekocht, maar eigenlijk nog nooit gebruikt. Weet u, ik vind het namelijk zielig. Nu is het dat helemaal niet (in ieder geval volgens onze lokale shelter-mevrouw), want de hond merkt het na een paar minuten al niet meer, maar toch. Ik vind het gewoon niet aardig. Daarbij komt het probleem dat je dat spul echt niet op je eigen gezicht wil krijgen, en sja, om nou eerst de windrichting te meten, en dan pas de hond te grazen te nemen, dat is ook zo wat. En daarbij, ik vergeet dat ding altijd.
Dus het was tijd voor een nieuwe oplossing. En laten we die vandaag nou eens ontdekt hebben. Spuug.
Ja, serieus, gewoon spugen. Naar de hond. Ze schrikken zich helemaal te pletter, en gaan daarna zoeken waar je spuug terecht is gekomen zodat ze dat fijn kunnen besnuffelen, terwijl jij als fietser lekker door kan peddelen. Ideaal.
Vandaag heb ik dus op alle honden gespuugd. Ik schat dat ik zo'n vijftien keer "getuft"heb, op een ritje van 25 mijl. Persoonlijk heb ik volgens mij in heel mijn leven bij elkaar nog niet eens vijftien keer gespuugd, maar goed. Dat record is nu dus wel verbroken. En zo ook mijn imago van net meisje. Ik ben in feite een llama op een fiets geworden. Trap, trap, trap, hond, spuug, trap, trap, trap, trap, hond, spuug, hond, spuug, spuug. Ranzig, maar het werkt. Misschien moet ik dat maar eens in een potje stoppen en op de markt brengen. Wie weet.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Climatology
Besides being really kind of In-Your-Face, the weather here is also expensive. There is of course the ridiculous expenses of running your AC from about May to September, but there are also a multitude of hidden costs that I had never really considered before moving here. Take our siding for instance.
For those Dutch readers who just went "si-what?", siding is the stuff that goes on the side of your house. Very practical term, pretty much on a par with quarter rounds. Anyway. no matter what type of siding you have, it's a guarantee that its color will fade. At least on whichever part of your house gets hit by sunlight. And it will fade fast. I mean, we're talking a new coat of paint at least every five to ten years. That is if you have wood, like we do. If you're the (un) lucky owner (opinions are divided on this one) of a house with vinyl siding, the fading may take a little longer, but in the end, the sun will win, and you will be putting new siding on your house, unless, of course, you revel in being the neighborhood pariah with faded trim and discolored wood.
But if that was it, it wouldn't be too bad. I mean, I like painting, I can so do our house, I'm not worried about it. But you see, that's not it. Because next to being ridiculously sunny and bright pretty much all year round, Georgia is also really humid, and moist, and wet. And there is nothing sexy about it either. Because not only does this mean that hanging laundry outside to dry will do little to accomplish that feat, it also means that the sides of your house that get little or no sun grow moldy really quickly. And I mean really moldy. Moldy as in people who don't clean it off on a regular basis are bigger pariahs than people who don't paint their siding every so often. Nothing will bring a house value down faster than a nasty-looking house down the street.
Now how does one get rid of said mold? Well, you powerwash your house. That is really not the problem. The problem lies in how often do you have to do that. Because if you don't like your house looking like a showercurtain in a male dorm, about once a year. And guess when you have to do this? Not in the summer, when five minutes outdoors will give you a heat stroke, no you get to play with ice cold water in the winter! Life is fun! So this winter, we powerwashed our house for the first time. And it scored very low on Dixiechick's scale of fun activities. The water is freezing. The jet is so powerful, it will take the skin off your legs (accidental experimental testing confirmed this finding as significant), and cleaning all the nooks and crannies around your various dormers and porches means you spend about three hours practicing a wide array of yoga poses on a ten-foot ladder.
But as far as money goes, powerwashing isn't too bad. Just recently, I discovered the real kicker: our blinds. The blinds on the front of the house look as good as new. Granted, they're the twenty dollar kind from Walmart (I think), but, they could pass for the fifty dollar kind, if you know what I mean. However, the blinds in the back are a disgrace. The sun beats down on them every single day, and in the past eighteen months, they have just started to disintegrate. It starts with a small crack. Then a piece will break off, then another piece, and before you know it, your blinds aren't really blind as much as they are one-eyed freaks. The upside is that I've been wanting new blinds since we moved. I want those blinds with the really wide slats. But do I really want to spend hundreds of dollars on something that is going to be cracking (and fading) within a few years? And I know I could get wooden blinds. In fact, that would be a far more practical thing to do; they're easier to clean, they don't break and crack as easily, and they look nice. But you know, if we get those, we may have to tell one of our kids that they won't be getting a meal plan when they go to college. Seriously. Therefore, so far, I've been taping the slats back together. Yes. DixieChick spends considerable amounts of time cutting off tiny pieces of tape just big enough to tape the missing pieces back together so no one can see it.
I know. Who in their right spends all that time taping up fifteen dollar blinds? Apparently, only I do. It's silly, I know. But I just have a real problem spending money on new blinds if the old ones would have been fine if it weren't for the sun beating down on them all. day. long.
So, I'm telling you, hot weather is expensive. And dangerous too.
For those Dutch readers who just went "si-what?", siding is the stuff that goes on the side of your house. Very practical term, pretty much on a par with quarter rounds. Anyway. no matter what type of siding you have, it's a guarantee that its color will fade. At least on whichever part of your house gets hit by sunlight. And it will fade fast. I mean, we're talking a new coat of paint at least every five to ten years. That is if you have wood, like we do. If you're the (un) lucky owner (opinions are divided on this one) of a house with vinyl siding, the fading may take a little longer, but in the end, the sun will win, and you will be putting new siding on your house, unless, of course, you revel in being the neighborhood pariah with faded trim and discolored wood.
But if that was it, it wouldn't be too bad. I mean, I like painting, I can so do our house, I'm not worried about it. But you see, that's not it. Because next to being ridiculously sunny and bright pretty much all year round, Georgia is also really humid, and moist, and wet. And there is nothing sexy about it either. Because not only does this mean that hanging laundry outside to dry will do little to accomplish that feat, it also means that the sides of your house that get little or no sun grow moldy really quickly. And I mean really moldy. Moldy as in people who don't clean it off on a regular basis are bigger pariahs than people who don't paint their siding every so often. Nothing will bring a house value down faster than a nasty-looking house down the street.
Now how does one get rid of said mold? Well, you powerwash your house. That is really not the problem. The problem lies in how often do you have to do that. Because if you don't like your house looking like a showercurtain in a male dorm, about once a year. And guess when you have to do this? Not in the summer, when five minutes outdoors will give you a heat stroke, no you get to play with ice cold water in the winter! Life is fun! So this winter, we powerwashed our house for the first time. And it scored very low on Dixiechick's scale of fun activities. The water is freezing. The jet is so powerful, it will take the skin off your legs (accidental experimental testing confirmed this finding as significant), and cleaning all the nooks and crannies around your various dormers and porches means you spend about three hours practicing a wide array of yoga poses on a ten-foot ladder.
But as far as money goes, powerwashing isn't too bad. Just recently, I discovered the real kicker: our blinds. The blinds on the front of the house look as good as new. Granted, they're the twenty dollar kind from Walmart (I think), but, they could pass for the fifty dollar kind, if you know what I mean. However, the blinds in the back are a disgrace. The sun beats down on them every single day, and in the past eighteen months, they have just started to disintegrate. It starts with a small crack. Then a piece will break off, then another piece, and before you know it, your blinds aren't really blind as much as they are one-eyed freaks. The upside is that I've been wanting new blinds since we moved. I want those blinds with the really wide slats. But do I really want to spend hundreds of dollars on something that is going to be cracking (and fading) within a few years? And I know I could get wooden blinds. In fact, that would be a far more practical thing to do; they're easier to clean, they don't break and crack as easily, and they look nice. But you know, if we get those, we may have to tell one of our kids that they won't be getting a meal plan when they go to college. Seriously. Therefore, so far, I've been taping the slats back together. Yes. DixieChick spends considerable amounts of time cutting off tiny pieces of tape just big enough to tape the missing pieces back together so no one can see it.
I know. Who in their right spends all that time taping up fifteen dollar blinds? Apparently, only I do. It's silly, I know. But I just have a real problem spending money on new blinds if the old ones would have been fine if it weren't for the sun beating down on them all. day. long.
So, I'm telling you, hot weather is expensive. And dangerous too.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The second amendment
When you sit and think about it, it's amazing that I've managed to live in the US this long, and never once write about that much-contested second amendment: "The right to keep and bear arms". For those of you in Europe, that debate might seem to center on gun-toting anarchists in northern Montana and statements like "From my dead, cold hands" by has-been celebrities, but let me tell you, it's a lot more than that.
When living in Europe, it's really easy to take the stand that normal people really don't have a reason to keep guns in their home. And you know, for Europe, that makes a lot of sense. After all, Europe is not really known for its wild bear population, its rabid foxes, wild coyotes, poisonous snakes, snapping turtles, or any other wild animal that could possibly threaten your life. So when I first walked into my in-laws home, and was shown their impressive collection of shotguns, to say I was a little taken aback, would be an understatement. That soon changed, however, when a snapping turtle appeared in the family pond, the same pond where our boys fish, play around in their canoe, and build sandcastles. Since we like our children with all their hands, feet, and all other body parts intact, husband-dear and I ended up standing guard on the dock with a shotgun for about half a day, waiting for the beast to reappear. It did, and we are fairly certain that husband-dear sent it to the eternal marshlands in the sky. It sounds very cruel, but when it's between a wild animal and my kids, you know, the kids, even though they can be a huge pain, well, they win out.
So when we moved to Georgia, my view on guns had softened a little bit. I still really don't like the idea of people keeping guns in their suburban home, but I am beginning to understand it a little better. Like when my friend Kay told me they kept a shotgun in their bedroom for when her husband deploys. They don't have any ammo, never have, and last time I checked, they're not ever sure what kind of bullets their gun takes, but Kay likes the idea of having something to scare off potential intruders while her husband is away and her kids are asleep in the next room. Since my brother and I used to both have a baseball bat under our beds for when our parents were out of town, I can see where she's coming from.
It's become a fact of life that when you walk into any Walmart, you will see rows upon rows of guns next to the camping gear and outdoor sporting equipment. I no longer raise an eyebrow when I help someone move and find a box of ammunition in their closet. Again, think about the baseball bats / hockey sticks Dutch people might hide under their beds. And signs by the side of the road upon entering campus, reminding people that this is a gun-free zone no longer send me into a tizz about gun laws in general, but merely make me realize that with our students' propensity to totally lose their cool, that is probably a great idea.
But sometimes gun laws lead to interesting dilemmas. This morning I heard about a specific story in GPB that had me laughing all the way down the interstate. You see, in Georgia, you are allowed to carry a gun on your person if you have a permit. However, the Atlanta airport has outlawed any guns on airport property. That makes sense to me, you know, keeping within the whole "let's keep our country safe" paradigm. But apparently it doesn't to everyone, because one of the state senators introduced a bill to lift this ban. And the reason I found this bill so interesting was because of the reasoning behind it. You see, according to Senator Shafer on GPB, this bill would "make clear that you can pick someone up from the airport without having to toss your gun onto I-285 as you exit". You can't beat that logic, now can you?
Well, of course you can. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but don't most people plan to pick someone up from the airport? And when they do, they can plan to leave their gun at home? I personally can't think of too many "airport-pick-up-emergencies" that would warrant such a law. And even in that case, I'm sure that too can be fixed: "Honey, I totally forgot your mother is coming to town, I'm driving to the airport now to go get her. Can you meet me at the Exxon on I-75 to get my gun?". Or "Honey, I totally forgot your sister is coming to town, but I have my gun in my car, can you call her and tell her to walk down the ramp to I-85, and I will pick her up right by junction 22?"
Obviously, I've never faced this problem, and never will, so perhaps I'm underestimating the predicament millions of Georgians face every year. But all I really have to say about that is that legalizing guns might make sense, but it sure leads to some interesting dilemmas.
When living in Europe, it's really easy to take the stand that normal people really don't have a reason to keep guns in their home. And you know, for Europe, that makes a lot of sense. After all, Europe is not really known for its wild bear population, its rabid foxes, wild coyotes, poisonous snakes, snapping turtles, or any other wild animal that could possibly threaten your life. So when I first walked into my in-laws home, and was shown their impressive collection of shotguns, to say I was a little taken aback, would be an understatement. That soon changed, however, when a snapping turtle appeared in the family pond, the same pond where our boys fish, play around in their canoe, and build sandcastles. Since we like our children with all their hands, feet, and all other body parts intact, husband-dear and I ended up standing guard on the dock with a shotgun for about half a day, waiting for the beast to reappear. It did, and we are fairly certain that husband-dear sent it to the eternal marshlands in the sky. It sounds very cruel, but when it's between a wild animal and my kids, you know, the kids, even though they can be a huge pain, well, they win out.
So when we moved to Georgia, my view on guns had softened a little bit. I still really don't like the idea of people keeping guns in their suburban home, but I am beginning to understand it a little better. Like when my friend Kay told me they kept a shotgun in their bedroom for when her husband deploys. They don't have any ammo, never have, and last time I checked, they're not ever sure what kind of bullets their gun takes, but Kay likes the idea of having something to scare off potential intruders while her husband is away and her kids are asleep in the next room. Since my brother and I used to both have a baseball bat under our beds for when our parents were out of town, I can see where she's coming from.
It's become a fact of life that when you walk into any Walmart, you will see rows upon rows of guns next to the camping gear and outdoor sporting equipment. I no longer raise an eyebrow when I help someone move and find a box of ammunition in their closet. Again, think about the baseball bats / hockey sticks Dutch people might hide under their beds. And signs by the side of the road upon entering campus, reminding people that this is a gun-free zone no longer send me into a tizz about gun laws in general, but merely make me realize that with our students' propensity to totally lose their cool, that is probably a great idea.
But sometimes gun laws lead to interesting dilemmas. This morning I heard about a specific story in GPB that had me laughing all the way down the interstate. You see, in Georgia, you are allowed to carry a gun on your person if you have a permit. However, the Atlanta airport has outlawed any guns on airport property. That makes sense to me, you know, keeping within the whole "let's keep our country safe" paradigm. But apparently it doesn't to everyone, because one of the state senators introduced a bill to lift this ban. And the reason I found this bill so interesting was because of the reasoning behind it. You see, according to Senator Shafer on GPB, this bill would "make clear that you can pick someone up from the airport without having to toss your gun onto I-285 as you exit". You can't beat that logic, now can you?
Well, of course you can. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but don't most people plan to pick someone up from the airport? And when they do, they can plan to leave their gun at home? I personally can't think of too many "airport-pick-up-emergencies" that would warrant such a law. And even in that case, I'm sure that too can be fixed: "Honey, I totally forgot your mother is coming to town, I'm driving to the airport now to go get her. Can you meet me at the Exxon on I-75 to get my gun?". Or "Honey, I totally forgot your sister is coming to town, but I have my gun in my car, can you call her and tell her to walk down the ramp to I-85, and I will pick her up right by junction 22?"
Obviously, I've never faced this problem, and never will, so perhaps I'm underestimating the predicament millions of Georgians face every year. But all I really have to say about that is that legalizing guns might make sense, but it sure leads to some interesting dilemmas.
Monday, February 15, 2010
It's a kind of magic
Last year, when our town was blanketed with a pretty layer of white snowflakes, all the locals assured me that this was not normal. In fact, this was so rare, they assured me, that it had not happened in ten years, and this snowfall was enough to ensure another ten nice winters. Well, I hate to say this, but they were wrong. Really wrong. Wrong as in, on Friday we received about three inches of snow, and on Saturday morning I didn't drive to base as much as I slid there.
Now, look, I know that half of you have been buried in the white stuff up to your shoulders since about December 1. In fact, I'm pretty sure that many of you haven't been properly dry or warm since Christmas. And so our measly three inches pales in comparison to your arctic experience. I recognize and acknowledge all of that. I do. Really. I used to live in New England, I know snow and how much it can suck. However, having said all of that, I would like to point out that we live in a subtropical climate. We have 100 degree summers, and think nothing of it! We have palmtrees in our front yard! A special Georgia-summer-proof-type of grass that dies in the winter! We are used to spending Christmas Day on our back porch and Valentine's Day eating chocolate while laying on our porch swing! Snow simply does not fit into our idea of winter. So this past weekend was a real shocker. Stores closed early, and did not open until well into the afternoon on Saturday, which although it really affected my ability to run my errands on Saturday morning, and did have me wondering about the level of ballsiness of the locals, is perfectly understandable. I mean, these are people who have never seen snow like that before in their life.
And in light of all of that, I couldn't resist but take some pictures of the crazy winter wonderland that was our town. All the snow was gone by Sunday morning, the snowmen made by the neighborhood kids were reduced to tiny little lumps with scarves, buttons, and sticks laying on the ground, and our backyard has now truly turned into a mudpuddle, but we for a few short days, we felt part of the snowmagaddon too.
The front- and backyard. It started snowing about 2pm, and didn't stop until about ten at night. The dogs thought the snow was absolutely wonderful. The odd-looking round patch in the back corner is where the pool sat during the summer. We planted rye grass there which remains green all year round, thus leaving our backyard with something that can be best described as a crop circle.
Our new buckeye tree all covered in snow.
And a little video of the snow coming down at around four. It's amazing to think that in a few months I'll be floating around in my mini-pool, lamenting the heat!
Now, look, I know that half of you have been buried in the white stuff up to your shoulders since about December 1. In fact, I'm pretty sure that many of you haven't been properly dry or warm since Christmas. And so our measly three inches pales in comparison to your arctic experience. I recognize and acknowledge all of that. I do. Really. I used to live in New England, I know snow and how much it can suck. However, having said all of that, I would like to point out that we live in a subtropical climate. We have 100 degree summers, and think nothing of it! We have palmtrees in our front yard! A special Georgia-summer-proof-type of grass that dies in the winter! We are used to spending Christmas Day on our back porch and Valentine's Day eating chocolate while laying on our porch swing! Snow simply does not fit into our idea of winter. So this past weekend was a real shocker. Stores closed early, and did not open until well into the afternoon on Saturday, which although it really affected my ability to run my errands on Saturday morning, and did have me wondering about the level of ballsiness of the locals, is perfectly understandable. I mean, these are people who have never seen snow like that before in their life.
And in light of all of that, I couldn't resist but take some pictures of the crazy winter wonderland that was our town. All the snow was gone by Sunday morning, the snowmen made by the neighborhood kids were reduced to tiny little lumps with scarves, buttons, and sticks laying on the ground, and our backyard has now truly turned into a mudpuddle, but we for a few short days, we felt part of the snowmagaddon too.
The front- and backyard. It started snowing about 2pm, and didn't stop until about ten at night. The dogs thought the snow was absolutely wonderful. The odd-looking round patch in the back corner is where the pool sat during the summer. We planted rye grass there which remains green all year round, thus leaving our backyard with something that can be best described as a crop circle.
Our new buckeye tree all covered in snow.
And a little video of the snow coming down at around four. It's amazing to think that in a few months I'll be floating around in my mini-pool, lamenting the heat!
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