September 2004 Archives

Despite a horribly rough beginning, September has offered me a lot of good news, so let me share a little of it here:

1) I'm pleased to announce that you can now pre-order Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan's Game and Beyond from Amazon.com (and you can help the nice folks at Readerville.com by ordering it through the link I just gave you.) The essay I've contributed, "17 Things I Learned from Dean Smith," along with all the other pieces collected by editor Bob Batchelor, will be available come February, but you can get in on the ground floor with a couple of clicks. Such a deal!

2) My decision to give up directing Woodberry's fall Black Box play was a hard one. I love theater, and working with some of our best and brightest students was a delight. At the same time, I realized that it wasn't terribly healthy for me: when you've got only five weeks to produce a play from the ground up, time for exercise is the first thing to go. Worse, I'm a stress eater; the more stress I'm under, the more I eat. And of course I was working in the basement of the fine arts building and never got to see the light of day. As a result, by the end of the show I was looking very fat and white, resembling nothing so much as a six-foot grub. Not a good look for me. Now that I've found something else to do with my afternoons, I'm feeling much healthier and decidedly less grub-like.

3) The other side of the Black Box coin is that now I'm working with the Rapidan program, an outdoor activities group anchored by two of my favorite guys at WFS. Jim Reid is our science department chairman, an unflappable Michigander with a wonderfully calming temperament, a fierce love of nature, and a passion for wild edible foods. He's also the only other guy on campus with an M.A.T. degree, though he got his at (shudder) Duke. Paul Vickers, teacher of chemistry and occasionally physics, is the kind of outdoorsman who goes white-water kayaking in Chile for his sabbatical, but he's also a guitar-playing webhead with a twisted sense of humor and an enormous fondness for They Might Be Giants and Homestar Runner. It's great to be able to pitch in on something fun without having to be The Guy In Charge for a change. I get enough of that during debate season, when I'm literally the only person on campus who can run the debate team. There's a pleasure in getting to be part of a team, especially when you like your teammates.

4) The joy of the Rapidan program is that every day I'm getting to exercise. We've spent most of the last week in the pool, learning the basics of kayaking. The first day was a little rough because of some basic fit problems. To my surprise, my waistline was not an issue, but my skeleton was: I couldn't climb into most of the school's kayaks because the bones of my hips and legs wouldn't fit. After a bit of bruising and scraping, we finally found one kayak whose scale was closer to my own, and I've been practicing with it ever since. I can now perform an onside roll, at least on flat water, though my technique remains extremely sloppy. Still, I figure a roll is like an airplane take-off: if you come up and stay up, it was a success. We'll go out on our first river trip (on the mighty Rapidan River) on Tuesday. I'm sure I'll have details for you.

5) The other part of Rapidan is the hiking/rock-climbing part, and this afternoon we get to indulge in it with a hike up Cedar Run in Shenandoah National Park. This pleases me, because for the first time in a week I'll be doing something I know how to do, and know how to do at least as well as most of the other guys. And just in case my ego needs a further boost, I'll be bringing along the field guide and binoculars. Jim's a good birder and a superb teacher of chem and biology, but I'd like to think that today, at least, I might actually be the expert in the group.

6) I'm running a fantasy football league for my sons and their friends on campus, and because there are nine of them playing, I've had to form a team of my own to give them competition. That team, the Dodos, is 1-1 so far, which is all I'd hoped for. On the other hand, the teams in which I've invested my ego heavily are both 2-0 and tied for their league leads. The Fighting Coelacanths (spelled correctly this year) are battling the Frumious Bandersnatchi for command of the Animal Division of the Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen. Led by Michael Vick, Ahman Green, and the always-punishing Buccaneers defense, the Fish are hoping for another regular-season success story, but would trade it all for some wins in the playoffs. In the statistics-obsessed Number Crushers league, my Scrub Jays are tied with the Slobberin' Fools (operated by my old pal Ken Buck, who also runs the Bandersnatchi and is apparently destined to be my nemesis this year) and the Acoustic Enchiladas (owned by my next-door neighbor, physics teacher Greg Jacobs). The Jays have a rough week ahead, though; with Stephen Davis out and Priest Holmes ailing, they're counting on big games from QBs Peyton Manning & Steve McNair and breakout performances by Lions rookies Kevin Jones & Roy Williams. Can I go 3-0 in two leagues? Stay tuned!

7) Tomorrow is Kelly's birthday. And tonight, we're going to Charlottesville to see They Might Be Giants. Whoo hoo!

1:54 PM

First of all, thanks to everyone who sent us letters/gifts to help us through Five's death. It's been a rough week, but the sympathy and generosity you've shown has been an enormous help to us all.

The boys are still more down than Kelly and I are, not unexpectedly, but are doing better than they were last week. Classes have started for Woodberry, so I'm getting back into the routine, and that's also helping.

Somewhat to my surprise, I'm very energized about school. I'm always slightly buzzed when we come back, but there's often a heavy sense of obligation that weighs on me. Last fall it seemed especially heavy; I think now that it was a bit of a comedown from the exciting whirlwind of emotion and experience that accompanied 2003's sabbatical/book tour. It was hard to step back into the classroom and focus on my immediate surroundings after spending half a year focusing on faraway places and distant possibilities. By contrast, this summer started with hard work and moved through hard traveling, then ended brutally. Naturally, it's much easier now to look at school and see it for what it really is and what it really offers.

But it's not just that I've reached a more Zen-like attitude; school really is looking good so far. First, my schedule is very user-friendly, with small classes, good kids, and only two preps; I've even got several long chunks of time without classes (Monday afternoon and, as you may have guessed, Thursday morning). Those wide-open expanses of space are very therapeutic; I can get things done, and I can feel free to do nothing if nothing has become pressing.

Second, I've taken on a new after-school responsibility, dropping my role as director of the fall Black Box play and taking on the job of assisting with the Rapidan program, part of our outdoor education initiative; except for one winter where I assisted with the intramurals program, this is the first time I've ever had a gig working outside here. And believe me, fall at Woodberry is the ideal time to be outside: crisp air, beautiful views, plentiful fall colors. I'll be helping with hiking, canoeing, and rock climbing (about which I know a bit), plus kayaking (about which I know next to nothing.) But I'll be out in the sun and wind and rain, soaking up Vitamin D and working with some of my favorite students and colleagues, able to see the horizon.

Finally, there's my new toy. I'm generally not an early adapter, as I've mentioned before, but our tech department is very generous, and it also encourages us to give new stuff a try. I've resisted most of their initiatives, given that my usual classroom techniques involve a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and a lot of talking. Nonetheless, when my department chairman called us in for a demonstration of his Smart Board last spring, I took careful note, because he is at least as old-school as I am when it comes to chalk & talk. By the end of the session--less than 45 minutes--I was convinced to give it a try, and I told our TD that I'd like a Smart Board installed in my room over the summer.

I'll admit that I'm sort of torn between delight and paralysis now. The Smart Board is a big white screen, roughly 40" by 40", that's affixed over part of my blackboard; there's also an LCD projector affixed to my ceiling right in front of it. This combination allows me to do several cool tricks. I can project anything from my computer onto the wall--documents, web sites, PowerPoint presentations, scanned images, animations, you name it. I can also hook up a VCR or DVD player and project its output onto the screen, which makes it bigger & more visible than a TV monitor.

The coolest thing, however, is that I can use a stylus to write on the screen and save what I've written on my computer. When I fill up the screen, I just touch Save and open a new blank page. This is important. When you teach trimester-length courses, usually in multiple sections, as I do, it means you write the same information on the board up to six times a year for each class; often you have to erase/amend what you've written for one class in order to fit another class's notes on the board, then rewrite the original stuff when the other section of the first class arrives. But now I don't have to. Not only can I save what I've written for all time (and alter it as necessary), I now have unlimited blackboard space.

So maybe that's why I'm cheering up a little. Even as I've moved back into the bounds of school schedule and campus life, my restraints are fewer and farther away than they've ever been. Yes, I'm back in my nutshell, but I've always been fairly comfortable there, and now I really am the king of infinite space I've always counted myself.

3:30 PM

The ground in our yard is hard, even with all the rain we've gotten over the past few days, but in the shelter of the sugar pines, it's dry, broken up by the roots, and it crumbles when you stand on your shovel. I spent yesterday afternoon working in the open with a squarehead shovel and made no headway, so this morning I borrowed a round-point. It works much better.

I am digging a grave.

The grave belongs to Five, the dog Kelly and I took from the Chapel Hill animal shelter on May 24th, 1989. He was identified to us as a Jack Russell Terrier, a breed we knew nothing about at the time, and his exact bloodline wasn't important anyway. We were just looking for a smallish short-haired dog; we lived in a tiny house, and Kelly's allergies wouldn't support anything with a long thick coat. You could count his ribs--he'd been abandoned by his owners and had survived by getting handouts from the neighbors for a couple of weeks before he was turned in to the pound. When we noted that we didn't like his original name, "Charlie Brown," the clerk at the shelter helpfully suggested that we could call him "C.B." for short. We didn't tell him that dogs don't spell.

His name puzzled a lot of our friends. The real story? Back in the 80s, before we got Five, a short-lived prime-time cartoon called The Family Dog appeared on some network or other; it lasted about a week. In one episode, however, the titular family was showing its home movies, and the youngest daughter was narrating the events in a breathless, piping voice: "That's me up there mommy see me I've got my pail and my bucket and that's me going in the sandbox see me mommy that's me in the sandbox with my pail and see I'm putting the sand in it with my shovel..." Suddenly the camera cut to a shot of the dog, bright-eyed and waggy-tailed, and the girl shut up in delight for just a second, then spat out "DOGDOGDOGDOGDOG!"

When we first saw Five, he reminded us of that cartoon dog, so we decided to name him Dogdogdogdogdog. It was unwieldy, though, so we shortened it to Fivedog, and eventually Five. Most people assumed he got the name because he was the fifth member of the family, but in fact, he was the third. In some ways, his arrival created our family; up to that point, Kelly and I were just a couple. When Ian and Dixon arrived, the family was already there to accept them, and their lives always included Five's presence.

He stood about 13 inches high at the shoulder--a bit tall for a JR, supposedly--with pointed ears, a docked tail, and a sharp foxy face. His coat was mostly white, but his head and tail were brown. He also had a large brown spot on his back, on the right side shading over down to his rib cage. His toenails were a mix--some pink, some black, which made it really hard to cut them after he got to old to keep them short by digging. His face was as expressive as most people's, and he smiled. Not everyone believes us, but I'm telling you right now, when he was happy, he smiled. Anthropomorphizing, hell.

He even smiled for us yesterday when we saw him for the last time. He'd been slowing down as he aged, of course, having more trouble seeing, hearing, and managing the stairs, but on Saturday night he was suddenly in bad shape, with pale gums and labored breathing. He collapsed on his cushion and couldn't move or raise his head. I rushed him to the emergency vet in Charlottesville, and after multiple trips and phone calls back and forth over the next two days, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The vet said he might have two weeks; he couldn't breathe without oxygen and could no longer walk.

Yesterday at about 1:00, with rain drifting out of a grey September sky, the four of us gathered around him and said our last goodbyes. It's hardest on Ian and Dixon, of course; they literally don't know what life without Five is like. For Kelly and me, it's a return to a past state, but one that wounds us. Perhaps when the body is laid in its grave, we'll feel as though that wound has closed somewhat, and we can start looking at it not as an injury, but a scar.

My hands are sore and rough from moving the shovel, and earth from the grave still coats my fingers as I touch this keyboard. Like Seamus Heaney, I am trying to dig my way out of this with the only tool I really know how to use well. Maybe a little bit of Five will rest here in the ether of the Web, like the bits of him that linger in our house and in our hearts. The rest of him, the body that we knew and that he no longer needs, will rest in the earth I turned for him this morning with a borrowed shovel, warmed by the soft shroud of the pine needles.

1:28 PM