An Exchange of Words: David B. Coe’s Weblog

Today was graduation day at the university where Nancy teaches.  Sounds like it was a nice ceremony.  As always, graduation here reminds me of my own college graduation many, many, many years ago.  

I went to Brown, where the procession leading from the University green to the chapel where the graduation service takes place, goes through a complicated and wonderful marching pattern.  Basically the current graduating class is followed in the procession by older classes back for reunions, as well as by the administration and faculty.  They walk through the university gates and then line the road so that they can cheer as the others walk by.  But as each group walks by the last of the spectators, they themselves move to the roadside and become spectators.  In effect, it’s like continuously turning a sock inside out — each end gets pulled through; each group gets to watch every other group walk by.  Hard to describe clearly.  Suffice it to say that I’ve experienced Brown’s graduation as a graduating senior, as a five year alum, and as a twenty year alum, and eachtime it has been an incredibly moving experience that left me feeling that I was part of a much larger community.

So what about you?  What are graduations like at your colleges or high schools?  Any special experiences?

Thanks to all for the great comments on yesterday’s post.  Woke up this morning and found that my newly-minted teenager was very much like the child who lived here yesterday and the day before.  One day at a time.  That’s the ticket.

I seem to be in the middle of another good writing week.  I’m making good progress on the book, and more important, I like what I have so far.  I’m even finding time to birdwatch every morning before I sit down to write.   Spring migration is starting to wind down.  We probably have another three or four days, but after that it’ll slow down and we’ll settle into a typical Tennessee summer — hot days, thunderstorms in the late afternoons, muggy nights spent sitting on the porch, listening to the crickets and frogs, watching the lightning bugs.  Sounds good to me.

As of today, I am officially the parent of a teenager.  A girl teenager.  A very pretty girl teenager.  I need a gun….

I am entering a phase of life during which I will become utterly clueless in the eyes of a child who once revered me.  I will be hopelessly unhip.  In fact, I already must be, since I can’t imagine that the word “unhip” has been in vogue since the release of “Hotel California.”  Oh, and my musical taste now sucks.  Once upon a time she thought it was cool to listen to not only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Little Feat, but also James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt and Sting.  Now, if the musician’s name is more than one word long, and if it doesn’t begin with a lower case letter and include a number and six consonants, it’s not worth listening to.

For the next several years, my very existence will be a source of shame and mortification for her.  I will be able to make her cringe simply by opening my mouth or saying hello to one of her friends; I will be able to embarrass her any time I want. (Okay, so maybe there’s an upside to this….)

The phone will no longer be ours.  Oh, Nancy and I will still pay the bills.  But none of the calls will be for us.  My daughter will point out that this is the perfect reason to buy her a cell phone, but I’m not sure we want to go there either.  She also wants a facebook page.  And one (or more) of those online IM accounts.  She’s already emailing her friends all the time.  She makes me swear that I won’t read her messages, but even if I did want to read them, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of what she and her friends write.  We are all destined to live in a world without punctuation, capitalization, or traditional spelling, a world in which phrases become an indecipherable series of obscure acronyms:  nvm, omg, idk, l8r, g2g. 

SMN (Shoot Me Now…)

And boys.  Good God, there are going to be boys.  Lots of them.  (Of course she had to get her mother’s looks — it would have been too much to ask that she be short and funny-looking and bearded like her Dad….)  Hence the gun.  It’ll have to be a shotgun.  Something I can be cleaning on the front porch as they roll up to the house for that first date.  I should probably get a hound, too.   And a rocking chair.  They all go together:  hounds, rocking chairs, shotguns.  Then again, I’m not at all sure that as a Jewish liberal New Yorker with an earring I’ll be able to pull off the “Dad with the Shotgun” thing.  I wonder what it costs to put landmines in the front yard and driveway.

At least the second one isn’t a teenager yet.  Then again, she’s 9 already.  And very precocious.  

God help me….

Survived my soon-to-be-a-teenager’s birthday party last night.  We rented out the swimming pool again and served the usual birthday fare (Pizza, carrots, grapes, soda, cupcakes — not the healthiest, but not the worst either).  The kids seemed to have a great time and once again Nancy and I avoided having the party at our house.  Can’t put a price on that.  Two of the girls slept over, but even that went well.  They were quiet by 11:30; asleep by midnight.  Not bad at all.

Was going to blog about some political stuff today — again.  But it’s gorgeous out and my younger daughter wants to have a catch and really what could I say that hasn’t already been said?

Have a great Sunday all. 

Pretty routine week so far.  Finished a chapter yesterday and started a new one today.  So far this week, I’ve written about 6000 words on the STILL untitled third book in Blood of the Southlands.  I like the way things are going right now, though I know better than to think it will go this smoothly start to finish.

Instead of going to the gym in the mornings I’ve been going out birding and and taking my camera along.  We’re deep into spring migration here in middle Tennessee.  Lots of warblers coming through — Black-throated Greens, Blackburnians, Chestnut-sideds.  Tiny, exquisite gems that flit from twig to twig so quickly and so high up in the forest canopy that you don’t know which will get you first:  the ache in your neck, or the dizziness that comes from constantly focusing and refocusing your binoculars.  And then there are the Scarlet Tanagers and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, the Yellow-throated Vireos and Indigo Buntings.  No less colorful, but slower, mercifully.

Most of the wildflowers have finished blooming, although the May Apples are flowering and the forests are still filled with white dogwoods.  The trees are leafing out, providing the warblers with additional cover, which they really didn’t need, thank you very much.  It’s been a great spring.  In recent years, Tennessee has gone from winter to summer with only a week or two of truly spring-like weather in between.  Not this year.  This has been a spring to savor; cool mornings and warm afternoons.  And rain.  We’ve actually had rain.  Nancy’s garden is just exploding with irises this year — we’ve never had so many blooms.

So I get my nature fix in the early mornings and I get my pages written by late afternoon.  I could get used to this.

Bit of a scare this morning.  Our younger daughter woke up complaining of a stomach ache.  Her tummy was tender to the touch, she was having trouble walking without it hurting, and she had a fever.  Nancy and I assumed appendicitis.  So I called our pediatrician and described what was happening, and they reached the same conclusion.  Long story short:  I took her in and spent the morning shuttling back and forth between the doctor’s office and the hospital (x-rays and blood work).  Turns out the blood tests were negative and a closer examination and the x-rays convinced the doctor that it wasn’t her appendix.

She’s feeling a bit better now, though her fever is higher.  We’re starting to suspect that the stomach ache isn’t the cause of the fever (although the fever might be causing the stomach ache).  Anyway, it was scary there for a little while — I really didn’t want my kid to have to deal with surgery. 

We’ve had a rough start to the year, though I know that others have had it far worse.  But between my older daughter’s pneumonia and this, I’ve spent way too much time taking kids to the hospital recently.  No more, thank you.

Still managed to get my 1,500 words written this afternoon.  I’m almost far enough along on this new book to start putting up one of those word-o-meter graph things that other writers have.  I’ll have to figure out how to do that.

Yesterday was dance day here in Sewanee.  Both of our daughters, like so many of the young girls here in town, take dance lessons from the university dance instructor and her students.  Yesterday afternoon, they had their recital.  Our girls have both been taking lessons of one sort or another since they were four, so we’re old hands at this now.  Still it’s fun to see them up on stage, and it’s always a hoot to see the newest crop of four year-olds up there, showing off the few ballet moves they’ve learned, their eyes flicking toward the wings where their teacher stands running through the routine with them.

Both of our girls were in two dances:  jazz and tap for the older one, ballet and tap for the younger one.  They did great.  They’ve learned a lot over the years and they both seem to have a knack for dance.  I think it’s been good for them.  They have a sense of balance, of movement, of rhythm that they might not have otherwise.  And when they’re doing other activities – swimming or soccer, for instance — and their coach gives them instruction, they have enough body awareness to put that advice to use.

Last night we went to see the college kids give their recital.  They gave a good performance; the best I can remember, actually.  It was an eclectic mix:  ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, swing, modern.  Used to be that I’d watch my girls during the day and the college students at night and take some comfort in noting the distance my kids still had to go to be like the older girls.  This year, not so much.  My older one is growing up fast and looking more and more like the college kids every day.  Scary.  And fun.

Went for a photo shoot this morning.  It was foggy when I left the house a little after eight.  Sunday morning.  The roads were empty save for a lone jogger.  I hiked back down into Shakerag Hollow, where the trout lilies and dutchman’s britches and larkspur are blooming.  The white trillium are starting to open; the purple trillium will be out by the end of the week.  A few warblers were singing, Pileated Woodpeckers were drumming and calling.  The rains we’ve had over the past couple of weeks have filled the streambeds and flooded parts of the trail.  The trees are just beginning to leaf out, but the forest floor is deep green already.  

Great morning.  I got some good photos, which I’m still going through.  I’ll have to get out again during the week.

My kids came down to breakfast today all riled up because they’d heard on the radio that Barack Obama was dropping out of the Presidential race.  My nine year-old, who is a Hillary supporter (yes, like the National Democratic Party, ours is a house divided) was excited.  My twelve year-old, who is an Obamaniac, was a bit more skeptical, but she wanted to make certain that the report they’d heard on the radio (which apparently included a clip of Obama announcing his withdrawal “in his own voice”) was merely an April Fools’ prank.  I assured her that it was.

Maybe it’s just me, but this seemed a pretty clumsy attempt to fool people.  If you’re a radio station looking to trick your listeners, and your target audience turns out to be somewhere between the ages of 9 and 12, you’re aiming too low.  Off the top of my head I was able to think of several false stories that would have been far more convincing.

Let’s start with the obvious:  tell us it’s Hillary Clinton who’s dropping out rather than Obama.  THAT would have gotten my attention.  I still would have been skeptical, but at least she’s in more of a position to give up the race.  The guy with the lead in money, delegates, popular vote, and current horse race numbers probably isn’t going to quit….

Or tell us that John McCain has chosen his running mate and will announce the name at noon today.  Drop a few names as possibilities — Crist, Rice, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty. And then throw in a whopper just to make it interesting:  Lieberman.

Or, with baseball season starting up again, tell us that new names have surfaced in the steroid scandal, including not only several current major leaguers, but also Vice President Dick Cheney.  As proof, point to Cheney’s baldness, his jowly look, his hyper-aggressive statements and behavior.  That one I’d believe….

Happy April Fools’ Day all.  Oh, and by the way, did I mention that I’ve decided to pitch the whole writer thing and run for Congress?  Yeah.  I think voters here in rural Tennessee are ready to elect a liberal New York Jew with a beard and an earring.

Today’s music:  Sphere

My panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book went very well. It was moderated by Chris Oakley, owner of Oakley’s Gently Used Books in Charlottesville, and she did a fine job of introducing my fellow panelists (L.E. Modesitt and Steve White) and me. Each of us spoke briefly about our work and what drew us to science fiction and fantasy, and then we threw it open to questions from the audience. We got great questions, which generated enough discussion to fill the rest of the hour and then some. After that, Chris and her husband, Jim, took the three of us plus Steve’s wife, and author Peter David to dinner.

I had been thinking about staying in Virginia for the Author’s Reception Saturday night. It’s apparently a big event with great food. But I wound up driving back home on Saturday instead. I have a lot on my plate for the coming week, and getting home late Sunday would have left me exhausted and tense. And besides, I really wasn’t up for an evening of shmoozing with people who, for the most part, I didn’t know.

I got home in time to read to my younger daughter before she went to bed, to catch up with my older daughter and hear about the end of her school week, and to watch the UNC-Louisville game with my wife. None of these things did much to further my career, but they made for a perfect Saturday night. It’s good to be home.

Like so many people, I wear many hats in my life.  I’ve worn many of them while posting to this blog:  parent, husband, writer, businessman, academic, political junkie, sports fan, etc.  This morning I’ve been wearing another of my hats, one that people outside of Sewanee rarely see.  

I’m the coordinator for our local food buying cooperative.  Every month, a group of us orders organic foods, bulk grains and dried goods, and other hard to find items from a place called United Natural Foods, Inc.  The order arrives by truck, and we unload our items, sort them, and make certain everyone’s order is complete.  After the other members give me their checks, they go off to their homes to put their goods away, and I go to the bank to deposit their payments so that the check I just wrote to UNFI’s truck driver won’t bounce.  That’s what I was doing today; this was delivery day.

This is a volunteer position, one that I took on long ago because Nancy and I wanted access to certain foods that we couldn’t get any other way.  Between collating the orders, communicating with my buying club members, taking care of invoicing, and handling the finances on delivery day, I put in maybe five hours or so each month.  I don’t think it comes to much more than that.

This is a small town, and most people know me for my writing, or through Nancy or the girls, or from other volunteer work I’ve done for the youth soccer league and the kid’s summer swim league.  There are a few people who now know me because of my photography, which is kind of cool.  And there are also certain people around here who think of me simply as the Co-op guy.  

I’m fine with that.  It’s just another hat.