Writing stuff

I just sent back the proofs for an essay about teaching students to write in the context of chemistry research, titled "The Write Stuff."  I'm also settling down to doing some writing for the workshop I'm going to at the Collegeville Institute later this summer.  I'm writing about writing about writing...

I'm fleshing out a couple of pieces I wrote on the blog, and I wanted to be able to browse through it without a lot of clicks.  So I turned all ten years of writing into a PDF (thank you BlogBooker), printed it out (double-sided) and had it bound by the delightful guys at the local printer. More than a thousand pages, more than a thousand posts. Almost 400,000 words.

It's hard to believe I've written this much, in this space -- it's like a tiny time machine, I can pop back into a moment from the past, and remember what it felt like to be grading over the holidays (like having an ugly Christmas ornament hanging over my head) or see again the pigeons on an icy day in Philly sliding down the wheelchair cuts like snowboarders down a half-pipe.  There is a solidity to these memories, now printed out like this.  I wonder if a granddaughter or great niece might one day happen across this in a box, and what she might think about Crash and The Boy...

It's a good reminder too, as I stretch myself to write a more sustained piece than a column, or a blog post, that at least some of the time, I have the "write stuff."

#YesAllWomen

I consider myself reasonably savvy when it comes to social media - at least for someone my age.  I don't Snapchat, I do tweet and Instagram.  I have a sense about how private things are and (mostly) are not in cyberspace.  I have a public persona, who writes and speaks and teaches.  But until this week I didn't know about my "other" box on Facebook messaging.

I feel compelled to note that my public Facebook profile shows I am married.  I do not write about looking for romance on my blog.  I might add that I have gray hair, rarely wear as much make-up as lipstick, and have a Rubenesque figure.

So why do I have multiple messages from men I don't know in my "other" box - from men who "hope I don't mind" this intrusion?  I do mind.  I am not flattered.  I am not game.  #YesAllWomen

On the verge of summer

My friend Fran at There Will Be Bread had a lot (or should that be a Lot?) on her mind after a whirlwind week; Crash (now in the midst of a summer that will take him from intensive Latin, to work with a church historian, to the Naval History and Heritage Command) is writing about writing again after a whirlwind of a sophomore year.  Do you just show up again without explanation?

I turned my grades in yesterday, and while there are still some loose ends to tie up as department chair, I suspect it might be summer on my calendar.

Ignatius talks about stopping a few paces before your prayer space to pray for the grace you desire in that time of prayer, and to once again commend yourself into God's hands.  In that vein I headed off Tuesday night through the rush hour traffic to spend the night at the old Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville, and to see my spiritual director — to stop for this moment before my summer begins and ask for the graces I might need and to remind myself just how I live and move and have my being.

And like Fran, here are my scattered thoughts, more than a bit windblown...

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The weather was, as the local news station kept repeating on the drive up, "unsettled," but I threw my umbrella in the back and walked twice in gentle rains. After dinner, I walked through the hedgerows and back up toward the cemetery.  The newly cleaned gravestones glowed blue-white in the dusk, bright ovals hovering over the high grass.  I walked through, stopping to pray for a couple of men I knew, and for Joseph Grady, SJ, a scholastic, because my late neighbor Marie Malloy prayed for him. Then I leaned against the wall down by the oldest grave in the cemetery, which belongs to Anthony Ryan, nSJ a novice who died 10 weeks after he entered in 1931, and prayed.  Despite the unsettled weather, it was a very settling spot to pray.

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One retreat was wrapping up, another just beginning, so everyone was having a talking dinner.  Arriving near the end, I found an empty table, filled my plate and sat down with a book and crept into the silence held between its covers.  At the end of the meal, a Jesuit friend (and my long-time confessor) came over, offering tea and gentle conversation, both of which I gladly accepted. It was a grace-filled entry into the celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation, a celebration that was warm, joyful, grounded in my current challenges, bracing and above all, a deep experience of mercy.  Easter all over again.

Shoes made for walking

Black flats and bike

From where I sit, graduation is all about the shoes. My shoes. The students' shoes.

It makes sense, this event is about walking.  We ask students "are you walking?" meaning, are you planning on coming to graduation? The faculty walk in.  The students walk across the stage, then off to other adventures.

I'm usually in one of the first couple of rows on the floor of the tent, so the student's feet are more or less at my eye level, and given that they are all in identical black robes, what tends to catch my eye first is their shoes.  Practical black Chucks (after the rain we had yesterday, a solid choice); sky high red stilletos (awarded "most stunning" by my row of faculty); classic black pumps; bright sneakers with a sari — and one pair of bare feet.

It's about my shoes, too.  I dress up for this culminating event, and dressing up means dressy shoes, but I walked 4 miles on campus today (I wore a calibrated pedometer), so it also means comfortable shoes. Given the mud, I wore black flats good enough to count as dressy, but not so good that I would be distressed if they were ruined (I speak from experience, I sacrificed a pair of black pumps to a commencement I was leading a few years back). And of course, I need a pair I can bike in.  If you don't have to drive to a commencement, don't.

That's me with the new William Kennan Professor of Mathematics, better known on this blog as Math Man.  I've already swapped my regalia out for a haori from Kyoto...

Twinning

Twinning in crystals is when two (or more) lattice intertwine, sharing some lattice points in a particular way.  I'm working on a essay, due to the editor on Monday.  I've researched and wrestled with the topic.  I've shuffled index cards around and outlined and sketched and written.  And today, with all the tough parts written and the rest quite nicely sketched in, I realized that this was a twinned essay.

Tomorrow is now devoted to some very careful surgery to separate the two pieces so they can each stand on their own.  Good news is that they will both find a home this summer.