As a result of Barb Chamberlain tweeting my last blog post, I’ve made some amazing connections via Twitter, the DM, and email. All I can say is WOW! What a gal. Who knew so many people would be inspired by the tales of my own stupidity? So now I feel a bit obligated to get bloggy with it about bikes, so here’s a quick story.
I went on two fantastic mountain bike rides this past weekend, and during one of the rides, we met up with the co-captain of our cycling team. Ben Shaklee, or as we like to call him, The Shak Attack. Man alive, this dude can rip on a bike, and he does it on a single-speed hardtail. If you now nothing about bikes but you know about computers, then let’s say, he’s in full-on dial-up mode yet he somehow does all the same interwebs work like he was on lightening fast WiFi. He pulls up next to you, and you think, okay, I can hang with this hardtail dude. He can’t even shift and he’s going to wear out with no suspension. Wrong! He wipes the floor with folks on 100 miler races, and he’s super swell guy to boot.
We see Ben, and he decides to ride with us–I am not the get up early and ride kind of killer. I routinely respond to invites that I am in full-on hippy mode on the weekends, so no, um, won’t be meeting you for a ride at 8AM. Have fun! I get up way too early for the jobby job, so the hobby jobs have to happen on unstructured time or I will go insane. I like me some sleeping in when I can. Ben was out riding solo and it was awesome to see him. Join us!
So here I am, dropping in on trails behind two incredible mountain bikers. Possibly some of the best in the Bellingham. Alright, dudes, I think, I’m going to stay with you. Three switchbacks later, they are gone. Boom, out of sight. I had to hit the brakes because my mind became paralyzed with fear going that fast. (You are going to die, said my brain. Slow down, loser.).
I slowed down and took the bailout lines. A bailout line is an easier trail around something harder like an obstacle. Say for instance, there is a giant boulder that you could “roll” off of if you were badass on the trail. If you are not a badass, then you take the bail out line around the boulder. The easier route. The bailout line. For skiers/snowboarders–You take the blue run instead of the black diamond. I frequently take the bail out line, and I’m cool with that.
Queen of the Bailout Line: A Memoir
The dudes waited for me at the fork in the trail. I get there five minutes later (epic time delay in cycling). “Did you guys ride that boulder?” I ask. They looked at each other like a small kitten just spoke to them. (Lookie how cute. Let me tickle your belly. Awww).
“You mean that roller? Brah, you can totally ride that,” said my feminist loving husband who calls me Brah as a term of endearment when we’re riding bikes.
“He rode that way better than me,” Humble Shak Attack says, “but rock on, Alyson. High-five for the bailout line. That berm is hard too.”
YES! And Thank You, Shak Attack. Sometimes even the bail out line is hard too. And boy howdie, I think that’s a memoir title.
All I want to do is be outside…boo hoo. These lovely nice days make it really hard for me to focus on the jobby job, and I must. This morning, I found some tempting distractions for my thoughts and ideas from friends near and far in my inbox. I counted myself lucky. I petted my dog, sipped my espresso, and read a beautiful blog post from a friend of mine that I thought had given up blogging. To make a long story short, she felt that pervy dudes were checking out photos of her daughters. She connected her blog to FaceTheBook and some “Likes” came from strangers that didn’t seem like fellow Mama Bloggers. They *looked* like perverts. She got creeped out. So much of her life is very public: she’s a writer, she and her husband own a business and an art gallery. Her location is easy to find. Nobody likes their location being triangulated by pervy weirdos.
And this is a shame. Andrea is a force of nature. A writer’s writer. A fantastic bloggity blog blogger. A strong intelligent woman, and unlike some Mama Bloggers who want to showcase all the perfections of motherhood, she is straight up hilarious about all of the disasters. She uses humor, wit, and a keen blend of self-deprecation to tell how it is. She never tells you how it should be–that’s why I dig her. From the outside, Andrea’s life is Sunset Magazine perfect, but she’s so down to earth. Easy to love. Easy to be around. We always start where we left off, and so many other people–parents or not–can benefit from her writing. Pervs are on the Internets. True. But they are everywhere your daughters are, so what do we do? This is not an easy question.
But here’s what I do know, Andrea’s daughters will not have the wool pulled over their eyes easily. All I can say is look out future, these future women are going to be great and do great things. Aunt Alyson knows it. And yes, you can paint my face like Dee Snyder with make-up any time. I wish I saw you girls more. I miss your faces.
Around the time that I started graduate school as an English major, my friend Andrea just started dating Andrew, or Drew as she calls him now. Most of the friends I hung out with then we’re single or newly single like me. I didn’t know Andrea the day she showed up to help me move out of the apartment I shared with somebody–he and I were in the process of blowing each other’s life apart. I needed help moving my possessions, so what a way to meet a new friend!
She showed up with my good friend to help, and she was wearing this mini-skirt, cute but impractical shoes, and a very nice blouse. I thought, “Okay, how is this person going to help me carry my furniture? She’s dressed to go out.” My other friend was a Carhart wearing construction working girl, so I was bit shocked to see this beautiful “city girl” show up as her friend. Turns out, I was SO wrong. Andrea picked up my bookcase all by herself and carried it to my friend’s truck. She took over and got shit done while I cried through my directions of where my stuff should go.
Turns out, she’s native Alaskan–nowhere near a city girl–who is tough as nails and we were fast friends. She met me at such a low point in my life, right? I was closing a major chapter of my life and I’m so glad she showed up. When we went out there was always some forlorn dude trying to swoop in and take Andrea away from our girls’ outing. We started calling her Mandrea. To put it simply, she’s one of those women who is just as gorgeous on the inside as she is on the outside. If I was the jealous type, I’d really envy her. But I’m not, so I truly feel lucky to be her friend. She’s witty, smart, and above all, a fantastic writer (repetition here for emphasis, English major). She’s Drew’s dream woman, and I adore him equally as much. They’re a couple that makes you think: Yes, those two. Together. The universe is doing something right.
So, Andrea, and others who may not blog or share things on the Internets because of weirdos, pervs, mean girls, poorly behaving yahoos…you name it, we shouldn’t let them control what we share online or anywhere. And sometimes, I know, readers, you may not be too amused with how I am breaking the rules of grammar. Writing the way I shouldn’t. Breaking. The. Rules.
Thanks for the email, Rude Person, letting me know that you can’t believe I was an English teacher. I didn’t respond to you, in case you haven’t noticed. You did, however, use “their” when you meant “there”–but who I am to judge about your level of shit baggery? You took the time to email me that “you aren’t too amused” about my writing? Seriously?! Watch me ruin; the semi-colon. Watch me–use the dash. I’ll, use, a, comma, any, where, I, want. For the record, I’m not an English teacher anymore. And I’ve stopped caring. (I just started a sentence with AND, mwhhhhaaa haaaaahaaa!)
People like you make it hard to share–but you know what–I’m a lemonade from lemons type gal so you reminded me of a song! Sebadoh, yes, “Not Too Amused” and Rude Emailer, “I’m tired of listening to you.”
If we don’t share because of the bozos, we’re taking the bailout line when we really should punching it off that boulder.
About a month ago, I stood on the podium for my local bike race series. And let me tell you, it’s not because I competed for it; I just showed up the most. You gain points over a period of time with a series, and I earned the most points because I came to the most races. It’s true, Woody Allen, showing up is a major part of success.
I’ve “won” two races—simply because I was the only woman who showed up in my division.
For the awards ceremony, Ms. 1st Place did not show, so I told Ms. 3rd Place that we should step on the top podium together. Fuck it, I said, we won that top step for showing up. To which all of the bike folks cheered (much alcohol had been consumed prior to the awards). Cell phone photos galore. Facebook tags. Nice tweets. All of it.
What surprised me the most was Miss 3rd Place and her reaction. After the ceremony, she thanked me for suggesting that we usurp the top step. All for a good hammy photo, I thought. But she seemed so truly grateful, and she shared with me how she was so thrilled to beat me for the first time at the last race. I told her that she had it on the last climb, and I didn’t. Completely bitchin’ that you got out of the saddle and passed me. Wicked fast-like. You deserved it, I said.
She was so sweetly shocked that I hugged her for beating me, that it got me thinking.
We’re all chasing somebody’s wheel if we want to improve.
In bike racing, you are described as “chasing somebody’s wheel” when you’re in a good battle. I had no idea that she was trying to beat me for an entire season; I was chasing Ms. 1st Place. Her wheel. Damn her. As a spectator, you can witness this battle. You can see the times that two or three riders can race against one another and switch places. Chasing a wheel and then leading. Chasing. Leading.
At the last race, Ms. 3rd Place and I went back and forth until I was just cooked. I let her by me on the uphill, and I never caught her again. My husband witnessed it, and he yelled, “Go get her. C’mon, babe, DO IT.” I couldn’t. I was, as the bike geeks call it–shelled. I just smiled at him as the snot ran down my face (my nose runs the entire time during a very cold race. It’s truly sexy, I know).
I’m always so thrilled when new women show up. I’m very proud to say that every woman I’ve encouraged to race eventually ended up beating me. This is no exaggeration. I’ve recruited six women to this sport simply by walking up to them and saying, “Hi, my name is Alyson. I see you at every race. Does your partner race? Why don’t you?”
For every one woman, there are 30 men. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. Truth.
And here’s another thing you must know, there are many talented bike riders who live in Bellingham. There are international pros, their friends and/or spouses, and people who moved here to ride their bikes. Luckily there are everyday people in the everyday-bike-rider category who can still find a way to stay fit. It’s fun. In a local bike race, you have small battles throughout the race. There’s always a wheel to chase. Or people chasing your wheel. There are at least three local meet-ups happening right now as I type this. Folks who like to ride their bikes together.
I have never won a race, but I have won the local series once. I have two beautiful trophies because I was the only woman to show up in my category. And next year, I am catting up—or moving up a category—to chase the faster ladies. My plan is to get better for next year, and possibly buy a new cyclocross bike. All very exciting stuff—I think I’m good enough to ride the same terrain as the fast ladies; I just can’t ride it as fast as they can. It will be cool to see how long I can stay with the “expert ladies,” and if I’ll still get lapped by the fastest lady (Spoiler alert: I will. She is nationally ranked in the US, so she should and will crush me).
(= series) [of events, seasons]cycle m see alsomenstrual cycle
[of songs, poems]cycle m
(= revolution) cycle m
intransitive verb
(= ride a bike) faire du vélo, faire de la bicyclette
(= go somewhere by bike) aller à vélo, aller à bicyclette
⇒ I like cycling.J’aime faire de la bicyclette. ⇒ I cycle to school.Je vais à l’école à bicyclette.
modifier
(= bicycle) [route, network]cyclable
Mais oui. J’aime faire de la bicyclette. Beaucoup. I like making the bicycle very much.
I started racing cross in Bellingham at our local series five years ago. My husband had been telling me that I should race for years. I dismissed his compliments about my ability for years. For years. I thought that he just liked the idea of having a partner/wife who raced. That I wasn’t good enough. He would list off the reasons I should race for years. For years. That women were always so cool to other women because there were so few of them, he said. That every woman he’s ever met who rides always wants more lady riders and racers to join them. That he rode with ladies in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, and they all said the same thing. That we need more ladies who rip. That I’d love the women who race. That I would fit right in. That all of his lady friends asked why I didn’t show up.
I just didn’t believe him because they looked so intimidating. Fit. Beautiful. Badass. Lady bike riders look intimidating.
Lady—for some reason, I use this word for bike racing. I suppose I hear a lot of the dudes say it, and I don’t think it’s maliciously sexist. There is a sweet dorkery to guys who like bikes that it’s hard to see them as intentionally sexist. I mean, we don’t call them “Gentlemen” riders, but they love their “Lady Bike Riders.” I somehow have embraced the title: Ladies Who Rip. Lady Bike Riders. Or as the incredible Paul Sherwen says, Lady Bi’ Ridahs.
Let’s just say, if you meet one of these dudes, and you’d like to snag a bike dork for yourself here are three responses that will surely win him over. (This also works for lesbians, btw. Girls who dig ladies who ride bikes are the very same as Dudes who like ladies–I use “He” because that’s what I like. Translate the pronoun).
Like be prepared for love at first sight should you say the following:
Yes, bike dork, I’d love to go on a 100 mile road ride with you, but I have some work to do so I’ll head out on your warm up and turn around when we get to 25 miles. Then I’ll make us dinner for when you get back. It’s true. I get totally hot for dudes who shave their legs and wear spandex. He will act bummed that you said that while being impressed—you’re still riding 50 miles. He’ll ignore the shaving dig; it has practical purposes—and I can give you tips on how to explain this to your dad (Ladies, scratch the shaving dig). Then said bike dork will calculate that you’ll have hot food ready when he returns from his ride. He will fight the urge to kiss you. He will think about what you look like naked for 100 miles.
Yes, I totally think spending [enter absurd amount of money here] on bike gear is an awesome idea. Do it. Let’s eat spaghetti for three weeks to make it happen. Seriously, we’ll stop by Costco to buy pasta on the way back from three bike shops you want to go to. It’s true; the better the parts, the better the ride. You might want to upgrade a level, really, you deserve it. It’s true; titanium is an amazing metal. I love listening to you talk about it for an hour. Go on. Tell me more. (Research titanium, so that you can ask good questions).
My dream vacation destinations all involve bikes. I don’t care where we go as long as we can ride bikes.
And here’s the thing, we are celebrating six years in Bellingham this week. Our one year plan has turned into six years. And I convinced my bike dork that we should live among the retirees because we could road ride and mountain bike without ever getting into our cars. Straight out of the garage we could ride, I said. Check out how close we would be to world-class mountain biking again, I said. We can wait out this horror in a good place, I said. I work online, we can live anywhere, I said. Surely things will get better; we live in America, I said. We can be optimistic while we wait out this horror. Six years ago. Patience, meet Reality.
And yet, I was super duper shy to join to the local bike-racing scene because I thought the women looked intimidating. Scary. Kinda mean. Super in shape. Beautifully fit. Wicked coordinated. Wicked fast. Ladies who rip.
And a month ago it hit me: Miss 3rd Place saw me the same way until I invited her to stand on the top step with me. To ham it up for a good photo. And it’s not true! I’m still freaky dorktastic—I crash my mountain bike at least once a month–only now I’m on a team, so I guess I now look like the ladies who used to intimidate me. I’ve lost a bunch of weight. I wear spandex. I borrow my husband’s razors that he uses on his legs, not his face. I look like ladies who rip. Only I don’t. Oh dear.
So let me be clear, ladies and readers who love ladies, every single woman I’ve ever met in the cycling scene is really kind. Very sweet. A bit dorky in their own way. Full of moxy. Strong. Opinionated. Driven. Motivated. Beautifully strong. Talented. Don’t be scared. Jump in. Try it out. You should race or go watch races. If you have a young daughter or a son, then you should do it even more. It’s not enough to see Daddy ride, Mommy should rip too.
Miss 3rd Place, we both won that night. That top step was all ours, kitten.
And so I told this story to a bike mechanic who supports my team. We are sponsored by a bike shop and we had a party last night celebrating our last year. At one point in the four years I’ve been on this team, I was the only woman out of 15 riders, and now we have four women! High-fucking-five, ladies, I’m so glad you’ve joined me. I needed some company to suffer with among mass dorkery of our dudes, right? Don’t your eyes hurt from rolling them when we hang out? Me too. Shut up and go shave your legs, losers (I totally love you all).
We’re also sponsored by Boundary Bay Brewery, and this the highway to the danger zone for me. All the beer you can drink. Extraordinarily good and strong IPA. Watch out for Drunk Teacher Indrunas—she’s bound to lecture you about something at a party. And last night, I learned that one of the bike mechanics has four kids. Four. Kids. That he supports. As a bike mechanic. Holycats, I had no idea. They were “trying for a girl” and his wife got pregnant with twins. He’s 28. High-school graduate. A local dude who rips. Incredibly sweet. Four kids. A Bellingham townie. (I am a townie who got lucky, so I can use this term).
He said, “You guys are the least likely to come into the shop. I know Scott is a mechanic, so I bet you guys don’t really need us. I know you can get stuff on the Internet cheaper. I get it.”
Knife, meet heart.
“Well, you know, we’re kinda broke, too. So there’s that.”
You’re college professors, right? He said.
Well, yes. Sorta. Yes and no. Somewhat. Kinda. Yes. (Don’t really want to get into it. How do you define adjunct and administrator to townies without sounding like a prick? You can’t; change the subject.) What does your wife do? Does she race?
Stays home with the kids while I work. No, she doesn’t race, but she likes bikes. She’s actually taking classes online. She wants to become a teacher. She’s getting a bit discouraged, do have you some advice for her? I’ve told her about you. I tell her how cool you are. That she can do it. She has to do it. You know, I’m going to be a bike mechanic when I grow up.
(Four kids. Bike mechanic husband. Online education classes. Classic Townie story. Oh dear. Bike mechanics destined to be townies don’t typically get into R1 schools; I know, I married one. Thank you, public libraries and federal financial aid).
Yes, I said. Here’s what she should do once everyone can use the bathroom and clean up after themselves without her help. Here’s what she should do, I said. What she should do.
As if I know what I’m talking about. As if I can even pretend what that’s like. As if I can help.
Well, actually, I think I can help. I care quite a bit about people like her. Like him. Like his kids. I care about Townies. I care about people trying to become teachers. I care quite a bit.
I held court with him for about an hour, and we figured it out. How I’ll remember her should I be in a position to help. How I’ll come into the shop more. How I’ll bring her a few books. How cool he is. How much I respect his trail building advocacy. How hilarious he is at trail crew days. How at 28 I felt totally lost too. (Only I didn’t have four kids). How it can be hard to love a teacher–he’s been warned. How I will recommend her.
So I’ll leave you today with a song that was “Recommended for Me” this week via YouTube. Crazy robot, how did you know this is what I like to listen to when I’m “banging on about this and that?”
Maybe it’s the research I did to start our Nick Cave Fan Club at work. It’s the words I put into the research engine robot. It’s the words. Me and the artists—male and female—all want to marry Nick. You know, so he can sing us to sleep. So he can play piano while we sit next to him on the bench. So he can wow us with crazy lyrics. So he can show us how to be completely punk rock while being completely romantic. So he can show us how to dance. To scream. To write. To love.
“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.” ~ Raymond Carver
After two very full days of helping to facilitate a faculty retreat and then two full days of a work meeting; I’m completely and entirely knackered. If you’re familiar with the federated wiki, then I can say my brain feels like the YHOD. Or as the wonderfully hilarious Lisa Chamberlin might say, “I’m so tired I’m bound to type something that would make me a total YHOD.”
I reread my last post and realized that I attributed Jay Mascis to a cover when I really meant Buffalo Tom. Talk about YHOD-ery. Just because I’m caring little about attribution lately doesn’t mean I can accept inaccuracy (Sorry about that, Jay).
So here’s some Yo Le Tango for your day and my day of being a bit like Barnaby. I have to commute to work, but you know, “I’d prefer not to.” I really need a day off. Boo hoo, says my unemployed friends. Okay. Deal, Indrunas.
For the rest of my readers, I can describe this feeling as being so joyfully exhausted that I can’t think. I have the morning off to make up for the non-stop seven day workaday last week, and I’m cool with that. I like to read and write in the morning most, but I have to agree with Mr. Carver. What he said in my epigraph. But alas, I’ve got meetings this afternoon, so my two hours of morning slumber will have to suffice.
I learned so much over the past four days, but I don’t want to write about that now. I need time to think. So many voices in my head. So many amazing things spoken in my presence. So much big picture. So many details. So much coolness. So many ideas. So many ideas. So many. So.
Here are two short shorts—you know in honor of Raymond Carver’s Short Cuts. Though how could I ever compete with Mr. Carver’s tales? And Mr. Altman’s choice of Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits was just chemistry on screen, right? Nonetheless, I can claim some inspiration from Carver if only by name only. Short. Cuts.
After I got bumped from my flight on Sunday, they set me up with a room at the Holiday Inn, so I went to the bar to write all by my lonesome; it was wonderful. Only after hour and half later, Drunk Daft Willy came over to my table. Here’s the conversation:
Him: Hey, noticed you were writing. My son’s a writer.
Me: Oh. (Here we go, Captain Observant. I start packing up my stuff).
Him: I noticed you are wearing a ring. Married?
Me: No, I just wear this ring to fend off assholes in bars when I’m travelling.
Him: What a good strategy! That’s makes you a pretty smart gal, right? Must be because you read a lot. Are you one of those gals that’s read 50 Shades…?
Me (Seriously?! Chugging the rest of my beer, not making eye contact):
Him: So I hope you aren’t calling it a night all alone…wait, you’re leaving. Um, wait, I didn’t get your name.
Me: ‘nite. (Daft Willy).
Him: Well, you don’t have to rude about it, he yells a bit loudly as I exit the bar.
Yes, I do, Daft Willy! You see, if I want to talk to you, strangers of the world, I will let you know. In fact, I was writing about the two conversations I had with my taxi drivers, and I did not want to be interrupted.
Fun fact: I always ask taxi drivers for their most outrageous stories of picking up passageners—and these Portland taxi drivers helped me see a bit of the Keep Portland Weird spirit. Pure gold! I wanted to summarize what we talked about, and I wanted to summarize some ways we—that is higher education—can help taxi drivers go to school. Both of my drivers had dropped out of community colleges. I hate those stories.
At the time, I was so seriously annoyed with Daft Willy, but now I think this conversation is kind of hilarious. I just wrote about the good ol’ waitress days, and I was surprised at how quickly my forked tongue spat out the bitter sarcasm. In this era of my life, I’ve tried to be nicer when I don’t like somebody, but Daft Willy just deserved it. And really, that ridiculous tome of actualized sexual repression must be such a pick up line right now for the Daft Willies of the world.
It’s all over the place that 50 Shades of Grey Matter. Jeez. I hardly want to write about that phenomenon, but here’s something really pretty entertaining. Google Target, the title of that book, and electronic toothbrushes. My stomach muscles hurt from my friend imitating the conversation of the Target employees who were trying to figure out where to shelve one of the movie-inspired products. I would type it here, but it’s better shared in person. And I want to keep my blog somewhat respectable. You know, a family affair type blog (insert laugh track here).
And speaking of things better shared in person, I met the most wonderful stranger in Portland, OR! My two friends in that city were both busy with the jobby jobs, so they couldn’t hang out with me. Epic sadness. So I set out solo to roam the city on foot and “take a jaunt with my camera” (as my photo teacher once called it). You see, I first went to Portland circa 1994, and it depressed the hell out of me. The waterfront was dirt, the buildings were boarded up, and it smacked of Rust Belt desperation–like towns that I had escaped. And there were junkies everywhere. That still exists, but it seems a bit more contained. They at least have public art to enjoy while they slowly kill themselves and lose their teeth to crystal meth. Portland and Seattle have a serious problem with drug addict homelessness. As the wealth distribution grows even wider, the homeless live under the highways, in doorways, on the sidewalks, and along the water of our beautiful cities on the rise.
And oh my word, the new buildings! Portland feels so different. So up and coming. So shiny. So very interesting. So silly—a $7 grilled cheese sandwich out of a trailer—why didn’t I think of that?
Circa 2004, the then boyfriend now husband and I went on a road trip of college towns where we hoped to someday get a job (enter laugh track here), and we weren’t especially excited about Portland. It seemed like a lesser-Seattle and a very weak San Francisco. It still depressed me then. But that was before The Dream died, and I now have different eyes. It feels like a very big Bellingham, and I think I could live there or near there. Not sure. Not really thinking about it. Not thinking about that at all. Really.
So while I was down by the water, I heard this woman’s voice.
“Are you from around here? Do you know how to get to the other side?”
She didn’t look like a meth vampire. Like she’d stab me for $5 bucks.
I said, “No, I’m not but I think you have to walk the bridge, so maybe it’s best to stay on this side. You could walk into the downtown area.”
Her: Well, I’m just wandering around. I should be at a conference, but I feel like being outside.
Me: What conference?
Her: [Something science-y something science something] Soil and Erosion. Sounds exciting huh? Where are you from?
Me: I live in Bellingham, WA, but I work in Everett. I’ve been in a hotel for two days in front of my laptop so I need to walk too. Totally get it.
Her: Then you must know about the Oso mudslide. We’ve been talking about it quite a bit.
Me: Yes, we had a student die in the slide. It’s pretty terrible. Have you talked about the lack of regulation with timber companies? I have a hard time believing it was a natural disaster. The disaster is the unregulated timber industry.
Her: I know what you mean. I live in Montana.
Me: I lived in Montana for a few years. Where do you live?
And so it went. We had a lovely chat, and we kept walking together. She was really interesting, and she understood my job—always a plus if I don’t have to explain the jobby job to strangers, ya know. She asked me if I had any Portland recommendations, and I asked her if she had been to Powell’s. She said, “No. Is that a restaurant?”
So I insisted that we walk there together. You can’t go to Portland and not check out the city of books! I was thinking of going back one more time, and how entirely cool to introduce somebody to that bookstore. How entirely cool to have something in common with a stranger who walked with me for a mile or so.
I told her a bit of what I was up to in Portland, and she was very interested. You see, she has to little ones she hopes to send to college someday. So I told her the promise that my co-chair and I made to one another when we got started with our OER project. We will have OER institutionalized and figured out by the time your kids are in college. We hope to. We want to. We have to.
We parted ways in the lobby of Powell’s and my mind went back to the end of the meeting. How I shared that it was so refreshing to be around people that I don’t have to convince that OER is not just “my good idea” because it is THE Good Idea. I struggle with feeling like I live on the spectrum of being either Chicken Little or the person Cheering The Good Idea. It’s exhausting. I just want to be the person doing the work to make it happen.
It was just nice to be among strangers who all have this mission in mind. It’s now Our Good Idea.
At the end of the meeting, one of the teachers talked about how he was one of the underprivileged students that we are trying to rescue with this project. He talked about how he struggled as a student financially. And he said, “I wish I had known that teachers were working this hard when I was a student. I would have worked harder.”
And we are working hard, and I just met 50 people who are up for the fight. Up for the challenge (wink). Up for the task. Maybe we’ll have fewer people living under highways someday. Maybe a taxi driver can find a way to go to school. Maybe the daughter of a welder can become an eLearning Director someday with less debt.
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Me too, Tennessee. Me too.
Tonight I was supposed to fly home to Bellingham from Portland, Oregon after a meeting, and my flight was cancelled. As the PNW enjoys early spring-like weather, the east coast has a boatload of snow that’s wreaking havoc on the airlines. I’m really okay with being trapped in Portland for another day. I get to attend the last day of a very cool meeting with very wonderful people. And I dig this city. All is almost cool.
Only that I’m missing my Humanities Lecture and this makes me feel awful for two reasons: I was looking forward to it so much and I’m letting down at least four teachers who thought they were getting a day off from the tyranny of lesson plan writing. Right?
You’ve been there. It’s so suh-weet when you have a guest speaker, and you get to run the class without doing the work. And I was oh so excited to teach. But I can’t get there. Maybe we’ll be able to reschedule. Maybe not. I really hate letting people down that I love, and I truly adore the teacher who asked me to do this lecture. Sadness.
Despair, meet my broken heart; I won’t get to teach.
But I’ll get to be at the second day of a meeting that is entirely amazing. Like so entirely awesome that I want to write about it, but I can’t. Yet.
Telling this story is not the realm of middle management. We don’t get to shout about the big news, but let me tell you, readers, I’m in on something so entirely cool that I’m in disbelief that I have the title “Institutional Leader.” I still look around like there is somebody else other than me in charge. Wow.
And well, let’s be clear. I’m nothing special. What the hell, airline, you suck. Why give me a meal voucher that I can’t buy alcohol with? I left an awesome little event with truly wonderful Manhattans and brilliant people only to pay for IPA out of pocket. An entire plane full of strangely wasted business people who are at the Holiday Inn drinking up their per diems. Just type. Don’t look up. Don’t engage. Don’t look. Just type. Ignore everything. Pretend like you’re working. Pretend.
But I will share with you, readers; I have been obsessed with the idea of cover songs and their connection to open learning movement. Ethos. Obsession. Motivation. Connection. Yes.
I mean, how many times have you been at a concert/live performance only to hear a cover and fall in love with the new version of the song? In the moment. Yet.
For instance, I love New Order, which only exists because of the demise of Joy Division.
Which then leads me to this beauty from Buffalo Tom, which I love the most.
I’m not sure how to connect the idea of open learning to the creation of cover songs, but I can’t seem to let the idea go. I just can’t fully accept that open learning is something new.
Like this mindset hasn’t already always existed among musicians that I love. Listen to the end of this song and tell me that Buffalo Tom doesn’t make that ending refrain all their own.
All their own, yet entirely somebody else’s. But it’s his. It’s mine because I love it. But I’m not the kind that likes to tell you.
Derivative yet entirely original. Just try to tell me that it’s nothing new.
I have a bit a different schedule this morning because we are hosting our annual Instructional Retreat.
Here’s our mission statement:
The annual retreat provides opportunities to share big ideas and best practices by creating meaningful interactions among the campus community.
And it takes five months to plan it. Check this place out, it’s PNW glory. The first photo is rock art left on the drift wood from a stranger. Most likely kids. And the view of the sunset is beyond gorgeous:
Tough gig, huh? It’s just easier to be a participant than a planner, and I so hope it goes well.
So on the first day of the retreat, I’m taking the morning to learn a bit about the fedwiki. Or as my husband says as he turns back to his reading, I’m “spending time federating my obsession with the wiki.” I do know for sure that when I talk about the fedwiki-ness, his eyes don’t glaze over like they do when I talk about work jive. Unfortunately for him, he’s on the front lines of my constant education about higher education administration. I’ve made a swan dive from adjunct to administrator, and it’s a daily learning process that I’m sure bores the hell out him.
That’s okay, I somewhat tune out when he heads down bike dorkery lane. I understand about half of what he says, as he does with this “fed-wiki thingy that makes [me] so happy.” With bikes, he loves the simplicity of the machine and the complexity of building them by hand. I love riding bikes, so I’m more than happy to let him spend time in his shop, just as he’ll leave me to “federate my wiki.” Sometimes you just need to leave each other alone to head into your own private studio, right?
And here’s the best news in the world: the Mac doctors fixed my laptop! My Precious! I admitted that I wanted to kiss the guy when I saw my laptop turn on again and all my files were there. He turned bright red and didn’t look me in the eye for the rest of the transaction. Poor guy. I’ve been floating ever since last night! I can get a bike and I have my beloved little writing machine back. I can now head back into my studio, so to speak. After this retreat and another work gig, that is. But that’s cool. It was a wonderful $40 to spend, and I shouldn’t offer to kiss strangers who help me.
This week, I attended a fantastic lecture from a beyond brilliant philosophy teacher. He had so many great points that I’d love to write about more, but here’s the one thought that keeps circling in my brain. He said that we’ve become so obsessed with the tools of learning and we have forgotten to come out of the workshop. We spend so time with the hammer that we have forgotten to spend time with the people we are building for, and he said “Sometimes we need to exit the workshop and sit at the dinner table and talk about the things we are building. We can’t always be in the workshop.” And the lack of discussion about “why we are building things, and that,” he cited, “is one of the many problems with education. We need to come out of the garage and sit at the dinner table.”
Soon after I attended a meeting where we discussing interview questions for an art teacher. I am not an artist, but I’m a bit crafty, I love most forms of art, so I’m tickled pink to be on this committee. We were advised to listen for ways that a teacher brings “art out of the dark.” In other words, most art history classes are slide after boring slide in the dark with endless lecture. That was my experience with taking this class in college, and I’ve learned more on my own that I did in that class. Oh woe, that was over 20 years ago that I took that class. And yet, that’s still the problem.
Then last night I headed into the Things You Must Do so that I could federate my wiki. On My Precious. I think I completed all of the tasks. And I paused when I saw this little beauty:
Here is the quote which connected with my thoughts this week. Written by somebody who would have no idea about my daily reality, yet here it is. This is the fedwiki thing that happens, Happeners. It’s tough to describe, believe me. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about in the midst of this massive retreat event that’s a major part of my job description.
A studio is also a place where things are made. It’s tolerant of improvisation, mess and hoarding.
But the emphasis on the products that result from making has obscured the idea of studying as the process of learning. From Latin and French the idea of studying took on qualities of close attention and reflection: to study is to “regard attentively.”
And I’ve been thinking about lyrics that I don’t understand. If I should spend the time looking up references. Or if I should look up interviews with musicians to see if I can listen to them explain what they did in the studio. And then I remember the philosopher’s warning about focusing on the hammer. That this type of research doesn’t help me in the workshop or the studio. So here’s a song that if I had to cite songs I’ve listened to most in my life, here’s one of the top ten. Maybe.
If you know what Bono is talking about here, keep it to yourself. I have no idea, but I love how this song makes me feel. How sweet some of the lyrics are. How young I was when I first discovered this song yet I’ve never gotten bored with it. And like I wrote in my last post, maybe the point isn’t to focus on the meaning. Maybe it’s the feeling that needs to be the thing. It’s how the hammer feels in your hand. It’s how the workshop smells like bike grease and rubber. How my home office is full of photos, books, and yarn that makes me cozily happy. It’s that place where I “regard attentively.” I just arrived at what I’ve been trying to summarize for almost two months, yet still the words escaped me.
The fedwiki feels like a writing studio to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I see all of its other potentials for education and collaboration, but to me personally this is the point I’ve been trying to arrive at without success.
It feels like a writing studio in my writing machine.
So I also busted out my french dictionary; so regardez-vous avec moi–there are several connotations of “regard”—care, concern, respect, admiration/adoration, concerning, with respect to, see, watch, look.
Here are the three things I’ve learned so far, and this may not be interesting to readers who are unfamiliar with the fedwiki workings. Go back to the U2 link and listen. Thanks for reading, and carry on with your day.
Lesson 1: I had no frickin’ idea that the blue halo meant anything. Now I see it, and Things You Must Do did not exist in the first happening, right? Or did I miss it? I think some of those pages existed, but there seems to be more structure there now and it’s truly helpful. The teacher in me sees how this must have been a lot of work to simplify something this complex. If this was BattleStar Gallactica, I’d be saying “So Say We All” as a way to say thank you.
Lesson 2: I think I’m just now getting the “fork from local” and how many pages have I created? How many edits have I done? How many forks in the road did I choose? Wow, this is a tougher thing to get and having the attitude of just rolling with it is crucial. And absolutely fabulous.
Lesson 3: I was kind of C+ student in the last Happening. I went in there willy-nilly and just played around, but I could have been a better reader at the start. I was more excited to use the hammer than I was to be in the workshop or the studio. I’ll aim to be more deliberate this time.
Now I’m ready to regard attentively, and I’m so very glad for this studio space. I’ll end with some words from Bono in the song linked above to say a bit more about how this learning space feels to me.
Black flash over my own love/tell me of my eyes/Black flash/Come through my own life/Telling these things/And I believe them…And I will be there.
So. I’ve been asked several times this week about my commute. How long it is. What I do in my car while I’m driving the 51 minutes from my office to my house. One way. How that aligns with my politics (it doesn’t, btw, but what’s a girl to do? And my car is a German built diesel beauty, that helps). How I can stand it. What I think about. If it’s better than commuting from the big city in the south (Yes! Twice the miles, and less time). If I spend my time thinking about work. (Um, no).
Silly interrogators, you’re like Jon Snow, and you know nothing.
I listen to music! Very loudly. So much so, I’m starting to worry if I am damaging my hearing. I’m sorry, did you say something?
On Monday, I load six new CDs and I listen to them all by Friday. I know there’s streaming and all things blue-toothy to connect to my cell phone, but I’ve decided to hang out with our music collection again. It’s been awhile. This week, I rediscovered I Become Small and Go by Creeper Lagoon. Here’s their best song ever, IMHO, lyrically and musically. I didn’t really follow them too much after this album, but I love, love, love this song.
Here’s my favorite part from “Dear Deadly”
Don’t care to hear about your pirate ship/Some treasure broken hearts and bloody lip/Dear Blackbeard set the sail, they’ve gone downtown/God save us, abandon ship, the captain’s down
And here’s the thing, readers, I don’t really know what this song is about, and I don’t care to think about it. This offends the educator in me, but there are things we just shouldn’t think about sometimes. Just enjoy it. Stop trying to figure everything out, dear brain, and just listen. I dig the bass, the Stone Roses-like looping, and the lyrics are just oh-so-fun to sing. And that’s good enough. So this commute, albeit a horrid time suck, is actually quite productive.
I also do this test once I hit north of Skagit county once a week. I tune into several Canadian stations to see if I can find a Rush song. And once a week, Geddy Lee reminds me of Canada’s finest export! And oh boy, I get giddy when I hear Geddy singing “Working Man,” cuz that’s what I am. (Only I’m a woman, but I get it, Geddy, that pronoun didn’t make sense lyrically). Once a week, I find Rush in the Skagit flats. Oh Canada!
And yes, I’ve been thinking about the work lately and my hobby job as a writer, and here’s what I’ve come to terms with about the cycle of the academic year. I am Burgess Meredith’s character in The Twilight Zone. Remember the episode “Time Enough At Last?” Here’s the conclusion, which summarizes how I am feeling lately. And this isn’t a ranty rant or a I’m-so-sad kind of statement; this is just a declarative sentence telling you straight-up how I feel. Period.
Maybe you feel this way too in your “piece of the rubble” and maybe you’re waiting for Rod Serling to whisper in your ear that you are living “In The Twilight Zone.” If so, I highly recommend really loud music for at least two hours a day. It helps. Kinda like a private dance party. Kinda like love letters from musicians you’ve never met. Kinda like joy by sound. Audio joy–surely somebody has said that, but I don’t want to look anything up right now.
And oh woe, poor Burgess! Note how happy he was walking down the stairs pointing to books and saying each month. How satisfied he was to have a list. How lovingly he embraced the book and the clock. Time. Time. Time. His smile.
And like his character, I have all the reading in the world to do. Endless emails. Help tickets. Updates. Shared folders. Google Docs shared with me. Created by me. All of it using up time. Unlike Burgess who loses his glasses literally, I sometimes lose my figurative sense of seeing. I lose perspective. I get whiney and say “it’s not fair” because some of this reading, just plain kills my will to do my hobby job. Some of it just kills my will to do, you guessed it, that writing thing. The hobby job!
Somewhere along the way, I picked up the “Advice for Writers” via email. I think it’s one of the RSSs that I kept when Google Reader died. They send you quotes, and I’m a full on sucker for the words of others. Here’s what Franz Kafka told me today:
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
I just need to see joy and ecstasy rolling there. I need to look for it. I need to sit at that table. This is a tiny little post to do just that seeing.
After an entirely long day, I busted out my laptop to do a quick revision. A quick look at Twitter. A quick update to some notes. It was three minutes before Jeopardy, and I wanted to do some work. Really quick like. We had just had dinner, so my water-glass was still on the table. So I turn on the computer, do some typing, and then I’m moved to deliver a “You’re-never-gonna-to-believe-the-crap-I-dealt-with-today” monologue and with one wave of my hand, two-three ounces of water spilled on my laptop.
For three seconds time stopped. I don’t think I breathed and I surely didn’t blink. I picked up my laptop immediately and shook all of the water out. The monitor blinked and then went black. Then the keyboard lights went out. I’m not sure how many times I said a word that rhymes with truck. And well, this was my very first time frying anything electronic. I’ve fixed toasters, coffee makers, and overall, I’m pretty good with things electronic. You see, my dad likes to bond with me by saving household projects for when I come to visit. I’ve helped hang a ceiling fan, drywall, shelves, and I’ve painted more walls than a handyman. For “a chick,” I’ve been told, I’m pretty good with fixing things.
But there was no fixing this. No bag of rice was going to work. No heater was going to stop the corrosion. So I waited three days to see if it would turn on, and it didn’t. So this afternoon, I took it to a Mac fixer shop where the guy who helped me was entirely cool. He told me the truth, and he assured me that he could at least recover the hard-drive. And he complimented me for putting the laptop near the fireplace as “a really smart move” (I wondered if he was tempted to say for “a chick” but didn’t. Prolly not, he seemed pretty cool).
So here’s the thing. It was so devastating for two reasons. 1] I bought that laptop with money I won from an award, and no such extra money is coming down pike in the foreseeable future. I was saving a small bit for a new bike. Now I’ll have to buy a lesser computer and accept that the new bike isn’t happening. And 2] I haven’t backed anything up on that computer in at least an year and half. And I know better. (I know, first world problems are mighty unbearable). But if I can continue on my sad sad train; I have to admit that there is research and writing on that computer that I just started again. Just resurrected from the dead, and now I’ve got to wait to see it again. I waited all week to hang out with those thoughts, and I can’t even remember where I left off, so it’s just going to have to wait. I’ll just have to pretend I know where I am next week when I meet with people who hope that I have a plan. I’ll just have to pretend that I’m happy working on other things. And I’ll just have to get over it.
The other devastation was that I lost the main draft of my PowerPoint for my webinar this week, and my oh my, that webinar got a lot of advertisement in the system. I am entirely lucky that the state board folks wanted to lead off their series with my work, and my preparation was derailed by the clumsy drama queen gesture. I wasn’t as “on” as I could have been because I stayed up late to fill in thoughts that I know are better on the fried laptop. My coworker was out sick all week so I was wearing five hats instead of two, and on top of that, we had the additional fun of an OL students behaving poorly. So sadly, a mediocre at best webinar will live on via the Internets. It could have been worse.
Never so happy was I to see Friday, my dears.
So. Back up your work. Watch your drinks around your laptops. And for the love of cats, be nice to other people.
And yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. NotSoNice who attended my webinar. I doubt you’re reading this, so I won’t worry your about comments. Should you want to debate about netiquette I’d be happy to explain the deep flaws in your argument. This was my fourth webinar, and I have to say, it’s a really strange way to communicate with people. You sit in a room and talk to a computer, and then you have a tidal wave of emails or comments about your ideas. Six months later somebody will mention it. A year later another person will link it in an article. It’s pretty fascinating to me, so that’s why I do it. But while I’m talking, I have to ignore the chat window. I’m too easily distracted, and I know this about myself, so I suggested that I ignore the chat while presenting during my first webinar, and it works for me. But every single time, there is always somebody who wants to chat-splain me.
Does that work? I don’t mean to appropriate mansplaining as a term, but I’m trying to think of a way to explain this icky dicky behavior. The chat-splainer usually has a penis, so maybe I should just call it mansplaining. It’s site-specific mansplaining, so that’s why I’m trying out chatsplaining. My first chatsplainer wanted to remind me that not all students could afford cell phones and that I need to be aware of “poor people.” Thank you, upper class academic, I had no idea.
Also, if you are reading this, and you asked me if you just “mansplained” the room as a self-check, I want to tell you as my friend-brah, you don’t have a mansplaining bone or fiber in your body! You just know your shit, and you’re a cool guy that I’m stoked to call my friend (see how academic I can sound?). You don’t mansplain when you respect the rants of females in the room, and you do that quite well.
But you, chat-splainer, I’d like to understand your perspective and I’d love to hear your feedback. The Chat is not the place. Not while I’m talking. You know how you teach your students about appropriate behavior in a classroom–like when to raise their hands, when to ask questions, when to contact you–all those policies you most likely have in your syllabus? Well, you too need to recognize what is good behavior for yourself.
Let me blog-splain you, Mr. NotSoNice, if you were attending my conference presentation, you would just leave if you thought I was wasting your time, right? Guess what, you could log out of a webinar! It’s so easy. It’s just more evidence that sometimes teachers make the worst students.
So here I am focusing on the one idiot, when everyone else was oh-so-cool! Maybe I’m Ms. Fool, right? People I respect sent really nice emails, wrote great things on the Google Doc., tweeted things I said. Again, how many times did I have amazing classes and the one student who gave me the ding was the only I thought about? You’ve done this too, right? It’s the same battle with your fragile ego when you present or teach. I have no solutions, but it does make think about people behaving badly on the Internet.
Four teachers came to me this week about students using excessive profanity, acts of bullying, and just plain disregard of netiquette. When I work with new OL teachers, I give them my netiquette statement to steal as their own. I’ve culled a statement together from other sources over the years and I added it to my own thoughts, so I feel entirely obligated to give it away. The new OL teachers are always so grateful, and I even highlighted the sections that are “English teacher specific” so they can adapt it for their own classes. The teachers I talked to this week were at loss about how to deal with this bad behavior. And of course, I’m always more inclined to see the “teachable moment,” right? Maybe you’re the first teacher to tell them something is inappropriate, I say. Maybe they didn’t know they were being a bully, I say. Unlike the chat-splaining Mr. NotSoNice, some students haven’t had the experience to know what’s right or wrong. And there are so many examples of what’s wrong. Read the YouTube comments. Gamergate. Comments on blogs. Twitter. Insults. You name it. There are more examples on how to mean than how to be kind.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am sometimes bitterly sarcastic. I got away with it for years as a waitress because I was wickedly mean to people I despised waiting on, and I was a terrible human being. I had to be nice to them for money, and well, I retaliated by being sarcastic, but they didn’t know it. One night, this guy gave me a $50 bill because I was “so entertaining.” I asked, “what do you mean?” I was waiting for him to ask me to come home with him. You know, waitresses are really prostitutes later in the night. Gross Rich Guys: A Memoir.
He said, “my friend is the biggest asshole and he thought you were flirting with him all night. I loved how messed with his mind! He had no idea there was no hope you weren’t going home with him. Here, I hope this money helps you finish college. My friends and I are going to laugh about this for years.”
I took his money. And get this, for three hours I made this guy think my favorite movie was “Rocky II” and every time I went back to the table I would “wow” him with a reflection about another great scene. I would fill up their beer glasses and imitate Burgess Meredith’s “You’re a bum!” scene from the first Rocky. By the time he was drunk, I decided to share with him that I thought there were deeply homoerotic undertones between Rocky and Apollo that clearly needed interrogation in modern cinematic theory. Mr. DrunkFace said, “Um, yeah. Um. Wow, I haven’t thought about it that way.” Mr. $50 laughed really hard, but I had dismissed him as yet another dumb frat boy too. I was wrong, Mr. $50 knew what a gigantic jerk his friend was who had been calling me “his Adrian” all night. He even yelled “Aaaaddriaaan” like Rocky did in part I. Sigh.
And gosh golly I was mean. That behavior was the equivalent of writing ridiculously mean things in the comments section. In the chat. On Twitter. On the Discussion Board in your class. It’s the same. But I was 25 and angry at the world that I was a waitress. Unlike the mean folks on the Internet, I limited my meanness to one person who was treating me poorly. He deserved it. But that still horrifies me how angry I was. How mean.
But on a lighter note. If you are looking into homoerotic scenes in traditionally masculine films, there is no finer moment than this:
The oiled bodies. The jubilant hugs in the water. The victorious salute after the wet oily hug. The muscles in the short shorts. Let’s just say, Mr. DrunkFace would never understand such analysis. Sadly not even today, all the years later. And I doubt he found his Adrian.
And on an even lighter note, I’ve been listening to Warpaint all week. Woohoo! In particular, their self-titled album “Warpaint.” And holy harmony, Batman, they are wonderful. My car has the best stereo I’ve ever owned, and this song sounds especially brilliant and vibrant.
Reviews are a bit odd about this band, so I can’t link any that I agree fully with–to say that are “female” Radiohead is a bit short-sighted, but I do see how some of their songs sound that way. Not a bad comparison really since Nigel Godrich produced this album. I love this live recording of Radiohead where Thom Yorke says, “This is Nigel. He makes our records.” And it’s so lovely British, that little Thom.
So if you’ve made it this far in my blog post, go listen to Warpaint and be sure to type something nice wherever you are in the digital space. There are enough bollocks in the world, do you really need to add to it?
I’ve been working on writing a post that captures my gratitude for what Ward Cunningham created. For what Mike Caulfield tried to teach us. For what I experienced with connecting with interesting folks to be sure from all over the world. For others who may be interested. For myself.
And I just haven’t been satisfied with what I’ve written. I’m so woefully unsatisfied. But I have to look me in the eyes and tell me that I’m satisfied. Until I finish up with this idea, I can’t seem to write about anything else.
Paul Westerberg, please help me:
Note that Mr. Westerberg ends the song saying, “I’m so—”
And well, you just have pick what comes next for yourself. And I heard you, Paul, “Anything goes.”
Recently I’ve hopped on the grouchy train a bit, and I realized it’s because I missed that federated wiki feeling. That time. That activity. Now that the workaday has begun again, I miss that focus. That time for writing. That time for reading.
And that’s okay. I just need to recognize I can still make time for it. Nobody can clear that calendar for me but me. Contrary to what I may write or say, I’m incredibly lucky with my job and what I do for a living. There’s just so much bollocks a girl can take: A Memoir.
So here’s what I’ve decided to reflect about The Smallest Federated Wiki Happening. In its final form. Anything goes.
If we were in the federated wiki, I wouldn’t have to tell you how this all got started. You could trace the pattern of my thoughts using the little symbols at the bottom of the page. Or you would compare what I’ve written below to what somebody else has written side by side. It would be so easy, and I’m blogging about it because I said I would.
Since I can’t fork their work, I’ll copy their words and add what I’m thinking. The titles below are their words and mine.
So this is the Ten Things I learned from Fedwiki Happening—it’s wee bit Tim and a little bit Ann and her knitting. All the TMI-trainwreck-like-writing is lil’ ol’ me.
1. The Technology & Casting On
Tim: It’s still in development and if you go in with that attitude you’re going to be OK.
Ann: Casting on lays the foundation for knitting. It is the method by which stitches are formed. From there, you knit and purl your way to scarves and hats and all sorts of knitted wonders.
Alyson: Tim gives us advice on how to have the right attitude, and Ann reminds us that the beginning is always hard. Always weird. Always a bit rough. Tim, obviously has more prowess than me about the technology and that’s amazingly cool. I just had very little to say about the bugs or the problems with technology.
Having just helped people through two major technology changes in two years, I can say, that I wish with my entire being that people would just chill the fuck out with wanting everything to be perfect. I thought the spirit of just letting people use the fedwiki to discover the bugs and problems was a pretty fantastic way of discovering how to improve the technology. Perhaps I was too busy navel gazing at my own imperfections to care about the imperfections of the technology, but I’d really like to see a day when people are less obsessed with perfections. I didn’t even see the Orange Halo of Death (thought it was some Gamer slang) until I was five days into the happening. The background of my site makes it hard to see, and so far, I haven’t lost anything of worth. Yes, the things that people make have all kinds of potential to just unravel. The spirit is there to improve, so I’m not concerned.
Here’s my very academic advice for using the Fedwiki or any technology: Just fucking roll with it, and you’ll be fine (A Memoir).
2. Cable Stitch & Something Hard to Learn
Ann: Because I’m not afraid to try, to learn, to knit the hardest thing.
And cable stitches are so very hard for me. I love the way they look but I can’t seem to make them work for very long. When I knit cables, they get weirdly less symmetrical, and I can’t follow a mathematical knitting pattern to save my life. But I can simplify a pattern to make it work for me. I can bust out the graph paper and scale down the difficult for my knitting abilities. For my interests. The fedwiki writing is very much like pattern that you can adapt and adopt for your own.
The notion of copying as a creative act is like taking a ball of yarn and creating a pattern of stitches. That makes total sense in my mind, but I had never thought about creativity in that way until now.
3. Some Days It’s Okay to Just Knit Dishrags & Fedwiki Fun
Ann: Sometimes, it’s enough to just cast on 4 stitches, use cheap cotton yarn, and knit a really simple thing for someone.
Simplicity. In thoughts. In writing. In writing thoughts about composing ideas. How very unlike my English major schooling. How very unlike most teaching about anything. Like our obsession with perfection, we’re so very concerned with the complex, the complicated, and the difficult—when really, sometimes we need to simplify and enjoy that very simple feeling. With its complication of usability, the fedwiki simplified my thoughts about writing. Composing. Creation. Simplicity as being so very uncomplicated.
4. Sometimes I Need to Knit a Blanket & Fedwiki Rabbit Holes
Ann: I still have not been able to stop time. And so, instead, I knit a blanket.
Ann’s sentiment is the opposite of number 3. Sometimes I need to go big. Not stop. Go straight for the deep end. Swan dive into things I don’t understand. And I’ll spend a lot time with the thing, the idea–just to learn it. Learn about it.
The knitted blanket is proof of that time well-spent. A satisfying product created during an era that I’d like to remember. I used to be a candle-maker, and I have one candle that I have not burned so I can remember that time. That place. The person I made candles with. The person I was then.
Creation—the long and the short—marks time in a meaningful way.
5. The Happening Process & Unknitting
Tim asks: I then set about getting my head around what is FedWiki, how does it work, how can it work better and how can I actually use this?
Ann: “In knitting,” she [a friend] said as she began to cast on again, “you can fix everything.” Ah, the words I needed to hear most. At last, here was something I couldn’t ruin. Something I could do over, and over, and over.
And it’s true. In knitting, you can fix mistakes, but they don’t disappear. Just like in the fedwiki. Every typo and digression is there–much to my horror at first.
Most experienced knitters can point out the moment I lost the pattern. The moment I had too much wine while knitting and watching a movie. Knitters always understand, and they tell you it’s beautiful anyway.
In the fedwiki, you can have a feeling like you are going to ruin something or that your work may be misread as “fixing” somebody’s ideas. But that’s not the thing happening—it’s an act of simplification that feels somewhat like a compliment. If somebody forks, then they’ve taken your yarn to create their own pattern. It’s almost like watching your ideas walk away with somebody else’s legs.
I’ve been really hesitant to write about “the feelings” I have about this experience, but I have to own up to being one of those folks who claim this experience changed my life.
6. Bad Knitting & Internet Learning
Ann: After ten years, I am a very good beginning knitter. And that suits me just fine.
I learned to knit from the internet. I tried to find the video of the woman in her London flat who taught me to knit, but I couldn’t find it. Sometime around 2006, I sat down in front of my laptop with size 17 needles (imagine fat crayons from when you were a kid, that’s the needle equivalent) and thick cheap green yarn. And I followed this beautiful woman’s voice and fingers and I taught myself to cast on, to knit, and to purl. And it took me hours. I lost track of the “hits” on her video–she went viral in my brain. Had digital badges existed then, I may have knitted my fingers bloody to earn every single one for beginners. It hit me like an obsession.
At that time, I had a dozen friends who offered to teach me. There were multiple places I could have taken a class, but I was drawn to the how-to video culture that was brewing on the Internets. I think at the current moment, we’re calling this same idea the Maker Movement, but really it’s just people teaching other people how to do stuff. It’s digital DIY beauty, and in 2006, I was getting more interested in online learning–I wouldn’t have known to call it educational technology–I just wanted to see if I could learn something with the Internets without the person actually being there. Could I be somebody’s apprentice when I’ve never met the teacher? And yes, luv, I could. And I did.
By the time I finished me blanket, I could er um follow e’ry bit of her accent, that. Such a luv, that Brit in her flat. Ri’ er you wanner flip da yarwn. Thas it, luv. Thas a goot knittah.
I imitated her accent for years. Connecting my obsession/learning to knit with the fedwiki, I have to admit, I haven’t learned this much from the Internet since I virtually sat down with that woman in her flat. This sounds like an overly dramatic overstatement, but I have nothing to gain admitting this to you, luv, it’s true, that.
7. The Knitting Hour & The Writer
Ann: Some days, I read more than I knitted. Some days, I wrote more.
And like knitting, I have to be in the right place and mood to write. I can’t multi-task. I can’t think of work. I need space. And the fedwiki “feels” like a space to me that isn’t actually a space. How to explain this one feeling?
I have ranted on and on about spin classes at gyms. To hell with that, I say, why not hop on a bike and be outside? But then again, I don’t live in Duluth, Minnesota right now, so I could gear up and hit the trails without getting hypothermia. I get it that some people really like gyms and spin classes are “amazing workouts.” So Minnesota folks, you rock it on your stationary bikes in the winter. It’s just not for me. And I can’t even pretend that I like it.
And that’s what Google Docs, the LMS, email, and even this blog forces me to pretend to like post-fedwiki happening–that these mediums promote collaboration, co-collaboration, cooperative creation…whatever we want to call it—but they are all the stationary bikes spinning.
Throw a leg over your bike—log-in to your fedwiki—and it feels like a movement of ideas with some much surprising potential.
8. FedWiki Thoughts & Playing Well With Others
Tim: Scale that out to group work and there’s some amazing potential for an incredibly tool to dramatically improve efficiency, productivity and creativity. The only drawback I can see at the moment is in publishing – but that’s really only if you’re thinking in terms of an artefact with a temporal constraint. As something living and breathing – Fedwiki would be perfect.
Ann: And I have learned that I don’t always have something to say, or something to add to a group. That sometimes, I just want the company of other people. I just want to sit in a circle and knit. By doing this, maybe I am learning how to be a group person after all.
Tim and Ann both got me thinking about how to be in the world with the ideas of others and with others in general. Mr. Federated Wiki Teacher made me think about the naming of things in his post “Users” and what that ownership does for students, thinkers, writers—and well, this fedwiki experience has been very personal for me. I’ve only shared this thought with three people, so why not put on the internet for the whole world to see? That makes it less personal, right?
You see, I was/am writing a book about backpacking and that Cheryl Strayed book Wild derailed me. When I first heard about it, I dropped everything and read it from cover to cover. The success of that book turned me inside out because it was being sold as a book about a woman finding herself on the PCT. At first, I was so excited to see what another writer with a vagina had to say about hiking. There is oh-so-much from the extreme sported male, but in the world of outdoorsy women, there is very little to read.
Shortly after I read it–the book was everywhere. REI, ranger stations, GoodReads, book clubs–and I hated it. I fell into a deep despair because this book was really just another chick lit book that just happened to be along the PCT. Don’t get me wrong, Strayed is a very good writer, and she deserves her success. But the book isn’t really about a woman hiking. It’s not really about hiking. She’s grieving for her mother, her loss of direction, her drug addiction, and yes, I’ll admit as a reader, the best parts of the book are when she’s on the trail, not lost in her mind.
And for the record, if you are a young woman feeling like you missed something in the 90s, let Aunt Alyson tell it. If you were a somewhat hippy gal travelling through Eugene, OR in the 90s, it was not hard to hook up with a somewhat romantic hippy dude. Kind brothers were a dime a dozen back then, and they were more than game to take your clothes off on a beach whether you’ve hiked 9 or 9,000 miles. So I’ve been told. So I hear, that is.
Anyways, after I watched the success of that book grow, I got a few mean rejections as a writer. Had a pretty hard year. Suffered to finished grad school. My writerly self was pretty wounded. In fact, I watched her walk into a lake with rocks in her pocket.
And I can’t explain why, but I’ve returned to that book because of this experience. I organized it by chapters, and in my mean-spirited jealous kvetching I have learned a lot from other hikers–male and female–who have read her book. What they liked. What they didn’t like. I still think there is a story to be told about the trail and being a woman on it. I see so few young girls and women on the trail, and they are missing out. Maybe my story will help them see you can hike a trail without caring about the bullshit of your lovelife. And for the love of cats, whether you have a penis or a vagina, have your ten essentials and don’t be an enormous dipshit in the woods. And no, I won’t go see the movie with you. Don’t even ask me.
9. The Things You Love Fit in a Ziplock Bag (or Smaller) & Happening Deconstruction
Ann: “All you have to do,” Stephanie told me, “is put it in a ziplock bag and then you can bring it everywhere with you.”
Tim: I think a cooperative approach is a significant shift away from the norm – and I think this kind of connective (rather than collective) approach provides a better way for us to learn.
I’ve spent too much time in graduate seminars to see the word “deconstruction” and not have PTSD about Derrida–I can, however, use Mr. French Philosopher’s critique of Western notions of binary thinking. That’s what I took from Tim’s use of the word deconstruction. It may seem like the choices are either/or but sometimes it’s both. Maybe the forking or not forking is differance in the most simplistic terms.
I haven’t completed this thought yet, but perhaps in the quest to name the action of writing in the fedwiki, we’re missing a chance to explain the tactile feeling of it. It’s collaboration, cooperation, connective, collective, and it’s all of the above. And why the hell not?
10. Casting Off & Giving
Ann: It’s what you do when you finish knitting, you cast off the stitches. Some people call it binding off, but that sounds so final, so shut down. To me, you cast off…I feel good when I give my knitting away,” [a friend] said. And ever since then, I give mine away. I cast it off into the world. Like good wishes, or love, I give it away.
And so there you have it, readers, that quote is my final row on that experience. It took me awhile to piece it all together. And it took me a train ride to put everything I wrote by hand onto the screen. Sometimes I looked out the window to watch the birds—the long necks trumpeeter swans, short stout heads on loons, the bright orange beaks of sea gulls, the bluest of blue herons, fat little ducks, dirty city pigeons–while other times I focused on the sound of my typing while the endless gray ocean rolled by the window. While the big grey ceiling above lit the sky.
If I could add to Ann’s thought about casting off, I would say that ending one project builds the skill for the next project. And that’s what keeps me in love with ideas about education. With the minds of Educators. With the dreams of Students.
Today I shared that I lived in Georgia for ten years and teachers “would learn me.” As in, for example, they would start off their lessons: “I’m gonna learn y’all @ X.” And this was the 80s, not 1935. Depending on the teacher, I would either listen with every pore on my body or I’d go back to writing notes to my best friend or love letters to some dork that didn’t know I was alive.
A witty person responded with that I now “eLearn all y’all.” You see, in the highly respected Southern American accent, “all y’all” means everyone. And I’m not sure if that’s true because I’m kind of struggling with a few things right now. So why not blog about my struggles, I thought? I’ve been on this weird rant train via of the blogosphere, so I need to chill out with something more productive and useful for others. My last couple of posts have been a bit on the odd side. Whatever.
My friend shared with me this weekend that she doesn’t really understand what I do now that I’m not “a professor” and being an “administrator” must really make it really hard on my professional wardrobe. She encouraged me to investigate more of the “hot librarian look” that I sometimes “rock.”
You may be tempted to judge her for being shallow, but when she said this to me, I was wearing dirty old blue jeans, a Bloody Mary stained hoodie, and I had almost just fallen of the porch because of an ill-placed pine cone. Leadership was not what I saw in the mirror that afternoon, so I think she was giving me advice to at least look the part.
This weekend I was in no shape to “eLearn” anyone, but today, people, I’m game. And I’m working on a webinar for IGNIS series with the state board. Woohoo! I’m gonna eLearn all y’all on what not do, sugah. Come on down now and get some learnin’ on what I done wrong for close to ten yee-ahs, bebe. Ain’t I so smaarht now? (So hard to do a good southern accent in writing. How did Flannery O’Connor do it?)
One Duh
And this is a big “Duh” and I’m almost embarassed to admit it, but my co-chair of the Textbook Alternative Committee and I had the same idea at the same time. We were both like, “Duh, listen to your students.” He and I have been struggling with how to make the time we have with our committee meaningful and productive. It’s part support group, but really, this group is already off and running in ways that have surprised me. It’s so impressive how they are so into what they are doing for their classes, and it’s a wonderful thing to help happen.
One of our nutrition teachers is looking to put together “a book of ideas” she’d like to teach her students. I have an incredible amount in common with this teacher due to our sustainability grant days. I focused on how locavore-like-behavior is good for the environment and the local economy, and she taught students about what they ate. So as a teacher, I empathize with how hard it can be to find good objective research, and as she described her struggles with OER adoption, all I could hear was the word “time.”
Time to develop. Time to think. Time to prepare. Time to write. Time to reflect. Time to ask questions. Time.
And co-chair Mike and I looked at eachother and said, “We’ve been doing it all wrong.” Now, instead of structured-like committee meetings, we’re getting laptops, hot drinks, the librarian, the eLearning Director, the Instructional Designer, and all of the faculty in one room to work. We’re going to have coffee-shop time for the OER committee.
Time. Coffee.Tea.Work. Duh.
One Ta-Dah
You know, as in, jazz hands and “this is something cool.” TA-dah, darling!
Today I’m working on My Decade of Mistakes: Four Things I Did Wrong as an OL Teacher. And. Oh. My. Gawdy’all. Where to even begin? Of course, I have some ideas, but I want to explain not only my errors back in the teaching days, I’d also like to propose how I would solve those problems today. I hope to have something outlined soon since they are making me their kick-off presenter.
No pressure, IGNIS kittens , thanks. But I’m game.
You see, I’m going on a train ride to Olympia for the winter eLC meeting! First of all, I love taking the train along the WA coast. It’s so spectacular at times, gritty and urban at other times, and I get shit done on the train (a memoir). I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve taken the train three times in the last year, and I get an incredible amount of work done. I’ve thought about booking myself work train rides so I can be left alone to work.
First rule of sitting next to me: Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to meet you. Haven’t you seen Hitchcock’s Strangers on the Train? Back off with your “Criss Cross” talk. Merry-go-rounds creeped me out for years because of that movie. Bruno, you were so delightfully femme: Nobody can rock a tuxedo like you.
Two Ta-Dah
I’m still processing a reflection about the federated wiki, so I’m kind of all over the place with my thoughts about it right now. I had this beautiful conversation with my friend Jasmine about the fedwiki and its similarities to what she’s trying to do as an art teacher. I mostly just listened to her and I substituted the words “art” for “OER” or “fedwiki” or “writing.” Mr. Caulfield Fedwiki Teacher wrote this wonderful post that I read that morning, and I read aloud this part to her:
I imagine classes where writing a good and useful summary of research is seen as being as “brilliant” as writing an original paper, where cleaning up data is seen as valuable as theorizing about it. Where a well curated and quoted set of material is as valuable as research. Where reuse is valued over reinvention. Where replicating experiments is as revered as creating new experimental designs. Where people who connect others and think about how to connect others get credit for the advances those connections bring.
And she said, “Yes, that’s what I want my art students to understand!” And I said, “Yes, this is what I’m struggling to communicate to faculty who are interested in open learning and OER. This is “the thing,” right?”
And then she said, “I enjoy talking work with you because you remind me it’s an art.”
She’s an artist-with-gallery-openings, people, so this made me smile. High praise. My lovely friend, Jasmine Valandani, is sometimes called The Scotch Tape Artist–lovingly, by the people who know her. I’ve linked my favorite examples of her work, but a website does not do it justice. It’s the size and scale of what she does that I find so beautifully simple. Lovely to look at it. Seductively sweet. Brilliantly basic.
Here’s how she describes her work:
I create mosaics of transparent tape on paper, miniature frames as in a film, capturing imprints of pollen, pigment, seed, spice. Making this work is a way of consciously engaging with the phenomenal world through touch. The nature of the tape is to eventually yellow, dry up, fall away. Inherent in each work is its own decay. The liveliness of the materials contrasts with the knowledge that what is seen will change and fall apart, inviting a lived as well as aesthetic contemplation of transience and the fragile yet sustaining beauty in the everyday.
So I’ll leave you with this beauty, for a Ta-dah or Duh of your own:
Okay, let’s be very clear. If I love something or someone, then I am happy to tell you all about it.
ALL. ABOUT. IT. I’ll tell you more than you want to know.
Want to learn about something I know a little about? I’ll blow up your inbox with everything I’ve got. But I have to draw a line in the digital sand when I hear the words “motivational workshop” or even worse “motivational speaker.”
Do not ask me to go to a motivational workshop where the motivational speaker lives unless you can A] pay me a lot, and I mean, a lot of money for “research purposes,” B] assure me it won’t be anything like a graduate seminar in Education or English involving body wisdom, and/or C] find your own ride home when I leave half-way through it.
Don’t get me wrong, readers, if any workshop helps you get to the other side of some horror in your life, then I encourage you to go. Do it. What do I know?
Just don’t ask me to be snake-oiled by a for-profit motivator–and please stop convincing me it’s worth my “time as a leader.” Don’t tell me it’s going to help me in my profession. Actualize some untapped potential that I have *to pay somebody* else to see. Work through something I didn’t know was bothering me. Reveal something about myself I don’t already know.
The power of positive thinking–all who have created their empires around this idea–is not for me. And shame on all you folks who cash the checks of desperate people who would be better off doing anything else other than spending time with you. And I don’t like people who yell, so why would I pay somebody to yell in my face?
That’s not say, however, I am not a positive person. The glass is half empty or half full, surely, but I get to decide what I see. Depending on the glass. Who’s holding the glass. And what’s inside the glass. Whether I’m thirsty or not. Depending on the day.
I don’t want to hop on the bloggy blog soap box, but if one more person tells me about a certain workshop that has given them ‘momentum’ I might just lose it.
In short, it sounds like a cult–and it’s super-expensive! Pas moi!
If I was going to join a cult, it would be free, somewhere off the grid near a clothing optional hot spring, and wouldn’t be concerned with “my profession.” If I was going to join a cult, it would be something that could foster kindness, hope, and peace to all of humanity. There would be no fee.
And please, let it be known that we need people to mentor leaders; I get that. You are complimenting me, and that’s nice. Perhaps you see that I unabashedly and routinely beg for advice from people I know to be smarter than me. That’s being a leader, right? I repay my advisers in gratitude, chocolate, or alcohol. It’s a wonderful thing, and yet, I’d never ask any of them to come to a workshop with me. Maybe I’m a little too John Wayne, here, but this cowgirl would rather set out on her own horse than join some fad of the week for self-actualization in the workplace. (Did I really just type that sentence? Have I been asked to write a seminar paper?)
And I also know that people have been broken by other people and they may need something like this workshop education…or whatever it is…to help them realize their momentum. Rock on. Go for it.
I’m hesitant to link this workshop to my blog for fear that “a graduate” will try to explain how I have it all wrong. How I’m not open to my potential. How I just need somebody else help me with my goals. And maybe, just maybe, I’m hearing a lot about this because I live near Seattle. I bet this was oh-so-five-years ago in Boulder, CO or New York. And I’m going to wager that this company has little momentum in Detroit, Cleveland, or Baltimore.
I have been, however, enjoying listing some questions I’d have to ask “my coach” should I somehow end up working for a fascist who would make me attend something like this. Yay, questions!
1. So the power of positive thinking will help me pay my school loans next month? If I *think* hard enough, soul crushing debt goes away, right? Shouldn’t we let other people know about this? This is rad! Poor people don’t *think* hard enough about being rich. I totally get it now.
2. So let me get this straight, if I want to help somebody very close to me find full-time work, I just need to *think* about him “working full-time” and a job will “eventually find him.” Do I imagine him working? Or the job finding him? Do I imagine the paycheck? Or the workplace? Can I buy a GPS unit to help the job find him?
3. If you do this coaching to “help humanity” then why do I need to write you a check? Did you *think* positive thoughts about me paying you before I walked into the door? If this about yourself and your own happiness, then why do you need to recruit me?
4. Ever advised your clients to just crank Metallica “For Whom The Bells Tolls” when they’re feeling a wee bit of rage? What about having a good cry to a Patsy Cline song or a song by The Smiths? Bet they didn’t come back to your next workshop, huh?
5. Do you sound this positive about your coaching work after three gin and tonics? First round’s on me; let’s test my hypothesis.
You see, I’m so very open to the hippiest of dippy if it makes you happy. I’m so very open to the churchiest of churchy-ness if it makes you happy. Just keep it to yourself.
Want me to tell you Namaste after we do yoga? I’ll look you into the eye and say it right back. Want to point out how the stars and planets influence your moods? I’ll crane my neck to learn those constellations. Want to teach me how planting garlic helps you keep track of passing time? I’ll weed, help you dig holes, and harvest. Want to walk into the woods for days? I’ll follow. Want to collect rocks for your familial shrine? I’ve already put two stones in my pocket for you. Want to solve the problems of education? Here, have a seat and I’ll cook you dinner. I bet after three gin and tonics, we’ll have it all figured out, you and I.
Just don’t ask me to attend a workshop to help me be the best me. On a Monday of all days.
Spoke & Hub 