generosity

I have recently been the recipient of an amazing gift. Gaby, whose work and photography projects can be glimpsed here, had an older digital camera sitting in her closet. As Gaby is an amazing artist/photographer, her equipment is quality, and even her older camera is pretty fabulous. Perhaps in response to my earlier complaints about trying to document our rural lives with a point and shoot (found here), my dear friend oh-so-kindly sent me her old camera.

It has been a funny thing to be the recipient of such a nice gift. I feel as though I am deeply indebted, and I am worried that I might not live up to my ability to "make photographs", as G would say. So, we are embarking on a photography course. As luck would have it, the entire content of a digital photography class Gaby taught at Berkeley is online. I have only gotten so far as reading the syllabus and reading about the first practices, and the textbook she used in that class is on its ways from another UW library. So, very soon, my dear friends, you will be subject to an onslaught of photos. However, for the time being, there is a smattering of new stuff on my flikr page, and I will show a few of my favorite new pics so far.

Dump Day

Today we *finally* made it to the Porterfield Dump.*

This has been a much-anticipated trip; David Giebler has been promising us a trip to the dump since we moved here in August. The Porterfield Dump is an institution. Much like the highly-regarded Micky-Lu's, the dump is a place that really cannot be well explained without a proper visit. We went, we hunted, and we gathered. Among the list of things we found: vintage 1960s light fixtures, a bar stool of the same era, and an enormous cooler for our trips to Woodmans. (We also found Art and Katherine Holman. Just back from their 3-months trip to Myanmar, Bali, and the land of their new granddaughter, we got to be among the first to welcome their tanned selves back in the North Woods.)

Here are some pictures to help tell the story of our adventures.


























*For those of you not from around here, Porterfield is a small town (population 1,991) 13 miles northeast of Marinette. Home of the Porterfield Country Music Festival (this year, featuring Billy Ray Cyrus and Kellie Pickler).

bday bruhaha

slightly tipsy at 1:11 am on my birthday. We just came in from seeing a local band in which one of my students is the bassist. Not only was I serenaded with a Beatles' cover birthday song, but we also got our friend/my colleague David to do a couple of songs with the band. and all the while it snowed outside.

me at 33:

Going Native

Today we went to the ice races. It is rather hard to explain -- involves a couple hundred people, junker race cars, beer, snowmobiles, ice fishing shacks and a lot of testosterone all coming together on the frozen surface of Lake Michigan's Green Bay.

This video of our good friend Cyndee (who graciously invited us to join her on the ice and fed us Booyah) explains all. It also should be pointed out that Cyndee's outfit not only includes her hot-pink down coat and David's deer-hunting hat but also leopard print gloves and boots (not seen here).

Grumpy Smurf has an Ice Dam

One of my favorite books from kidhood is Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. On the first page, Alexander explains:

I went to bed with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The book proceeds accordingly with Alexander recalling all of his woes and intermittently threatening to move to Australia.

So far, today has been kinda like that. It is only 2pm, so I am wary of making any grand claims that the Universe could take as a challenge to up the ante and make things worse. Lots worse.

I wasn't in a bad mood when I woke up. But Rhonda was. It started innocently enough: I made a joke that she didn't think was funny; I was more awake than she was; I was banished to the downstairs where I began to clean up a helluva mess left over from yesterday's cookie-baking session. Once R emerged from the upstairs, it was clear that the clouds were not lifting. I tried to offer solutions, but kept making things worse. So, after a few failed attempts at enjoying the morning, we both decided it would be best to just get to work. Clean up the house, get ready for the week, finalize some class plans.

Once I got to my desk, I began settling in to a day of work mixed with an appropriate amount of digital entertainment interspersed. Okay, I thought. This isn't so bad. I can hang out in my office, work on some stuff, watch some stuff, so and and so forth. About two minutes into this reverie I started to hear a noise. A soft but persistent "plop" every five or ten seconds. I looked up. Saw nothing. I listened. Heard it again. I looked up and left, and I stood up, reaching over to the corner of my desk when I began to holler "OH SHIT! The roof is leaking onto my desk. RHONDA COME QUICK! The roof is leaking. We have an ICE DAM! ICE DAM! ICE DAM!"

The next few minutes were pure motion with some cursing thrown in for fun. We had to quickly move all of my computer equipment, books, papers to dry ground. There was much running around and - at the high point - Buddy responded to our fervor with some barking.

Fast forward four hours. I am now sitting four feet to the left of my desk at a small makeshift table-desk. The dripping continues as we await the arrival of our gallant friend/superhero David who actually owns a ladder long enough to reach our roof. In the meantime, we spent some time walking from neighbor to neighbor inquiring about 25 foot ladders. "Good morning. I know it is the Sabbath, and we are your new lesbian neighbors, but do you have a ladder we could borrow?" Sadly we are the tallest house on the street and no one else seems to need a ginourmous ladder with which they can climb up to the icy rooftoop and begin to melt away the ice that, when thick enough, prevents melting snow from running off of the roof and, instead, encourages it to seep into the roof, through the attic, and right onto my laser printer.

Hallelujah! We're moving to Australia!

Guns for Education

I have been in an excessively good mood for the last several days. In part, I get really hyper and excited after teaching. And, since I teach twice a day, I have lots of high-energy occasions. I find myself surprised, charmed, and engaged by the students in my class. I have the most interesting range of learners: a retired armchair historian, a few single moms, and students with a wide range of differing abilities and life-challenges. And they show up to class every day. They seem really excited to be in college (if not always in my class) and they surprise me both with their insights and, at times, the lack.

And then there are always the turkeys. You learn to expect a certain element in your classes; in my experience at Washington it was often the Frat boys sitting in the back of the class with their baseball caps on, dressed in Abercrombie, snickering with disinterest while trying to recover from the weekend's parties. You are just a glitch in their day, and they are cocky as hell. The good news: these cocky, strutting beasts seem not to be in my classes (at least this semester). However, there are the loudest, strutting, look-at-me-I'm-cool creatures who like to traipse through our yard early in the morning. TURKEYS. Real, wild, loud, turkeys. Saturday morning (the day to sleep in, mind you) we were roused at 7am by no less than 20 wild turkeys parading under our bedroom window, across the driveway, and through the yard. Like wild kingdom, but real. And the best part about these enormous birds who live in our woods and eat our bugs is that they are just part of the status quo. No one pays them any mind. Of course, it is NORMAL to have large, 20+ pound birds grazing freely in the neighborhood. Yes, they probably live in your woods. And, yes, sometimes they like to cross the road very slowly. It is all part of the way of life in this neck of the woods.

We followed the already raucous morning of turkey-watching with an 8am session of "Colleagues with Chainsaws." You do not know this event? Well, it begins when two of your colleagues have plans to go to a gun show. They decide to meet up at your place and to drop off a cooler and a chainsaw. They then decide that we should just have at it and start trimming that tree that is so overgrown. Next thing you know, you have a music Prof, a biologist, and one domestic diva (Rhonda) attacking a 30 ft. Spruce from all angles. (Amy and Buddy watch, far out of harms way.) After an hour, the tree is much improved and the colleagues look at each other and say, "well, should we head to the gun show?" It is only then that I see that said music professor is wearing a t-shirt that includes the words "guns" and "education." Rhonda looks at him and says "In Marinette, even the liberals like guns!"

I can' resist tying this all together by mentioning that it is soon turkey season (and squirrel season!). I have a strange non -resistance to hunting turkeys. Whereas deer have these big, sweet eyes and always seem so scared, turkeys seem quite self-assured and unafraid. Shooting them seems not such a loss. There will be more. Lots more.

What has become of me?

Summer time

Today we took the day off. No housework. No unpacking. No bat-proofing. Nothing. Instead we slept in, did some reading and napping, and headed out to the Giebler's place in Porterfield. Buddy got to run around with the dogs (and chase some cats) and we picked veggies and then pickled them! Afterwards, David proclaimed "we just captured 19 jars of summer!" Good stuff.


On the bat front, we have called in the experts. Judith Johnson came by last night and checked the place out. She has a lot of experience working with bats as a ranger and biologist, and she can even identify the type of bat by looking at their poop (= guano). She had been in our second floor for five minutes when she turned to me and said, "Oh, Amy, I cant imagine a better space for bats. They LOVE it here." I think Judith thought this was rather cool and interesting. We promptly vacated the second floor and returned to sleeping in the living room.

So, we called more experts. There are these guys in Door County (the Hanks family) who have a patented "bat door" that they will install in your "point of access." After you pay them a bunch of money, they guarantee no bats for at least 2 years. At this point, it is *so* worth it. They should be coming out to us sometime soon -- there is a bit of a wait because it is the height of bat season.