Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

Pocket Lint There is an incipient energy on campus with the sudden influx of students moving into the dorms over the weekend and into the next few days. There are still some parents walking around campus in the timid fog of separation. There are first year students, international students, second year students who have never set foot on campus before, who stop suddenly in the middle of a pedestrian path to reorient themselves on their phone as they map out their classes, the library, the Blue Wall, the dining commons.  There are clumps of teens who all seem to shop in the same stores and wear subtle variations of the same attire. They move together sipping the same drinks or wearing the same kinds of masks. There are rebellious youngsters wearing far too little clothing to be inside in an air conditioned environment. And there are groups of Asian students roving the grounds with all manner of unruly hair styles that make my own unkempt mane seem tame. And for the most part, they al...

Witness I saw two white tail deer on the way home tonight. One paused on the side of the road until I was close enough to see its nose twitch and her nascent curiosity at the odd collection of sounds that are emanated from a slightly out of shape, past middle-age man, riding a bicycle up a hill.  And then, at the last moment, as if released from a trance, she bounded off after her fawn or slightly smaller playmate and I watched their tails flicker off into the woods like two little flames. Sometimes, the world is like that. Two flames dancing off into the distance through the woods and I am left behind to think about what I witnessed.  The past is only a few footsteps behind, and yet forever untouchable, like every regret at every missed opportunity, every delicately placed proposal that was missed, the smells of marijuana, manure, diesel exhaust, a dryer vent, someone's dinner, my own sweat as I ride through the small towns.  I look at my body in the mirror as I get dres...

Too Much Sun  Tonight's soundtrack: Curtis Mayfield, 1987-88 Too much sun.  I unbridled in basking days of uninterrupted sunlight. It was hard to resist, I quickly assumed the color of my childhood until my thighs were tender to the touch. While my traveling companions were all careful to coverup with lotions and sprays, I displayed all the wild abandon of someone driving a car with leaded gasoline while smoking a cigarette and not wearing a seatbelt. I can hear my doctor tsk tsk in my ear. So many raw oysters, I have become a part of the ocean's filtration system.  The feeling of my skin after swimming in the ocean. The way my hair feels when it has been rinsed in sea water I very quickly assumed the position of a beach bum.  The water was not numbingly cold and even the last day, as the hurricane was drawing near, the surf was mild and made for a pleasing loll in the ocean.  Of course, the specter of the pandemic and the variant. Eating inside for dinner and f...

What the Mind Imagines The last time we went to visit, my father uncovered a small crate of notebooks and files from college. I must have used them when I was teaching English full-time. I must have left them at the Goosepond house when I was living out there one semester.  Today, I taught my last summer session class. This was my first return to the classroom since I was a visiting faculty at Mount Holyoke for a semester. My students were all transfer students from across the state and we met online in a synchronous simulation of an in-person class.  I am proud of my students, they pulled through, they tolerated my scaffolded structure and prescribed focus on student success for transfer students. They even managed the condensed six week structure surprisingly well. A large number of students were really engaged with their projects and went above and beyond my expectations with the depth of their research and the professionalism of their presentations. A couple of students st...

I Heard it On the Radio  A heat wave settles in like a wet dog. There are no egrets, no herons.  It is the weather of dead squirrels face up on the side of the road. It is the weather of somebody's sick splashed like a bucket of paint. The day is like too much butter on a slice of toast. Everything sounds like a struggling dragonfly after an unaverted collision. Tonight, I will sleep and make up for sleepless nights. Sleep, the balm for the sane. I work in this building.

When Everything Was So Right  Tonight's soundtrack: The Jerry Garcia Band, 9/1/90 Shoreline, CA I remember my father teaching me how to ride a bicycle. I think it was summer time and we drove out to the K-Mart or Ames parking lot in Pittsfield on a Sunday when there were no cars. It was a great expanse of unbroken pavement except for the periodic lampposts.  My father did the traditional thing fathers have done since humans first started to traverse the Earth on two wheels. He unbolted the training wheels leaving them in a jumbled pile by the car. They were like crutches thrown off by the healed. He held onto the back of my banana seat and ran alongside me, talking, making sure I had faith. He ran alongside until it seemed like I was being held safe by the palm of his hand on the chrome bar at the end of the seat.  Like baby birds pushed out of a nest, or ducklings goaded into a fast moving stream, I pedaled on in an ecstatic state of locomotion.  A bicycle is the cl...

Wayfinding I drove my car in this morning because of a prediction of rain that never seemed to manifest other than a brief morning misty drizzle. I used the opportunity to explore an alternate route to work. Starting tomorrow, a large section of road leading out of Leverett into Amherst will be closed for roadwork.  My new route, is an old trek I remembered from when I lived in Leverett and a bridge was out of commission for repairs that lasted several years. It does not seem much further in distance, but it does add one more long hill. I tried to make mental notes of where to turn, landmarks I might look out for. The electronic road sign is not particularly helpful. It just says Road Closed 8/5 Find Alternate Route. It seems like, if you have an electronic sign capable of it, you could give some rudimentary directions, maybe a helpful street name. Instead, I am left to wander within the limitations of a car gps and my vague recollections. Aside from one wrong turn that led me down...

Thoughts Over a Joe Pass Solo Tonight's Soundtrack: The Oscar Peterson Quartet, feat. Joe Pass, Japan 1987 What comes next?  I've ridden so much this week my knee is rebelling.  It is particularly sensitive going downhill,  down steps. It is not the weight and pressure that causes pain, it is the release of it, the lifting of the foot  off the ground. My new Korean masks are a little too small for my fat head. Soon, I will be on vacation. I knocked over a microphone stand this morning and broke the shock mount protecting a condenser microphone. It had lasted years, a decade perhaps, without mishap. Today was the microphone's unlucky day. I am imagining being a band leader. Tomorrow will be a busy day and I will have to remember to get lunch with my breakfast, that kind of a day. It is going to rain. I am going to relish  standing under an umbrella as drops fall all around. To walk among the rain drops. Take care and be well, Leo This egg accidentally followed me...

The Things You See While Riding a Bike to Work  Today's soundtrack: Yuja Wang, Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major Op. 83, Munich Philharmonic A flattened snake, a smear that was once a frog, perhaps. A smear that was once a chipmunk, perhaps. A slice of pizza, an orange rind. One dirty glove and an oily rag. A blue heron spooked from her pond in languid glide low over the rushes. A rusty tin of chewing tobacco. Take care and be well, Leo The church in Leverett Center.

Precarious Today's soundtrack: The Stanley Clarke Band, Jazzwoche Burghausen, 2016 Today was the first official day back to work. I rode the new to me e-bike as planned. The morning ride was a little damp from last night's rain, but warmer than I anticipated. I could have shed my jacket and pants, but I kept them on and just unzipped the jacket so I could feel the cool damp morning air billow around my body. A blue heron perched atop the Student Union. It is nice to discover new vistas, and right when I rode up to the edge of campus, I crested a hill and was gifted with a beautiful view of the campus, the iconic library, and the distant hills. For all the uncertainty of returning to work, it was a beautiful vision, something one could imagine striking awe into a travelers heart. Perhaps, in a few months time, this view will be something I see every day and maybe it will lose its sense of distinction. But for now, I feel like I will pause every ride when I reach the apex of the ...