driving my life
I just read my friend Jodi’s blog, and I am always inspired by her ability to write nearly every day, finding something in her world to BE inspired by. She takes beautiful photographs of her life (especially her gorgeous son, Isaac) and surroundings and shares them online. She is an incredibly creative person, and her sewing machine is also up and running nearly every day. I am blessed to be privy to her blog and her life. I am always inspired by her, and inspired to at least think about writing every day (usually, I’m sitting there while reading, going, “Damn! I should be doing this! This is wonderful!”
I took my mother and the pup to Vermont over the weekend of 10/20, to check out a graduate program at Goddard College. Goddard is my alma mater, where I earned my first master’s degree in writing in 1995. I had not been back on the campus since I graduated (wait, there may have been one ill-fated tromp through the campus circa 1996, but I hardly remember events in 1996 unless they were colossal, and that is a good thing). Driving up that hill to the campus was one of pure joy for me. Once I was on campus, I was delighted and OVERjoyed to see the massive buildings and grounds projects that had vastly improved the campus itself. When I graduated, Goddard was in dire need of being attended to. In the time since, the college has suspended its on-campus programs and focused solely on low residency programs, in order to best sustain the college itself and obviously to make the repairs and give the attention needed to the grounds. It is absolutely gorgeous. Goddard, being NOT your typical college, has atypical buildings, atypical statuary, atypical everything. Examples: the theatre is in an old, refurbished haybarn…the classes are held in an old manor…there are stone gargoyles and green men and sheep heads spewing water in an intricately designed fountain system…there is a student-created maze made out of hedgerows…there is a small, meditation building on campus which allegedly has a beam on its front from which witches were hung in Salem, MA. That last one was one of the determining factors in the early 1990’s which convinced me that Goddard was for me.
This is the essence of Goddard: When I was there one semester for my 8 day residency, and much too timid at that time in my life to actually partake of the exoticness that is Goddard, I became aware one evening of a semi-distant pounding noise that weirdly seemed to have some syncopation to it. The next day I was told that tens of students, including some from my writing program (hi, Rob!) had gathered in the big field in the middle of the then-on campus housing quad and created a drumming circle around a huge bonfire, playing until the early morning hours. After peeking around the campus in 2007, I knew that despite the on campus residency program being suspended, an event like this could still happen.
Alas, I don’t think the graduate program I was scoping out is for me. Maine is a particularly snobbish and persnickety state when it comes to graduate programs and what they MEAN and how they FIT in the REAL WORLD once you graduate. That snobbery and persnicketiness comes from a deep-seated sense of practicality and no-nonsense perspective. It would be very difficult to explain to a professional licensing board how my master’s in psychology and counseling from Goddard College would apply to a social work practice. At this moment in my life, I do not want to spend a lot of energy explaining to a bunch of board-sitters how this could be so, I want to just DO the work and GET the licensure I need and GET ON ABOUT IT. Goddard is still too “alternative” for my world. Luckily, there is a semi-alternative program right here in Maine through our university system that will deftly fit my bill. I’m tired of fighting “the man,” I just want to move on in my education, be excited and titillated by it, and practice it without cocked eyebrows and more paperwork to “prove myself.” Now I have to decide just when I want to pursue this endeavor. It’s a huge commitment in every way, will take three years to complete, and will tug me in ways as a social worker that I probably have not been tugged yet. We’ll see.
The pup was awesome in Vermont. Our trip was only an overnight, and Stella spent a lot of time riding around in the car. It was much too short and much too harried for me, a traveler who deeply prefers the sort of meandering that cannot be accomplished in a quick drive to and fro. We saw a giant bull moose in Vermont, just at dusk, by the side of the road. Well, actually I saw it. It scared the bejeesus out of me. My mother did not see it, and wanted me to turn the car around in RUTTING SEASON at DUSK so she could see its lumbering and gigantic shape outlined in the failing light for herself. I absolutely refused. There were some other dumbasses in a small compact car pulled off the road, accosting the beast with a camera…let them get toppled over by a two ton animal, not us.
The foliage was spectacular and perfect, we had arrived just in time. I went out by myself at 8:30 at night to a tiny, ugly little convenience store to get sandwiches made by a 60 year old, Santa Claus-appearing man wearing a nasty apron, who kindly and methodically built the sandwiches just as I wanted right on the spot. There are no fast food restaurants in Marshfield, Vermont. Only the hole-in-the-wall convenience store which is more like an old fashioned Mom and Pop grocery store, complete with Vienna sausages, live bait, and molasses cookies on the counter together. The next morning we got hot Green Mountain coffee and home-made cinnamon buns from the Maple Valley Café, and Mom had her first ever cheddar cheese muffin. Despite the fact that I was groaning and whining from all the driving and Stella’s minute instances of acting out, it was a fabulous weekend junket. We even went into “the city” (Montpelier) and ate at KFC.
There are, I believe, three people who read my livejournal, and a variety of others who may read my blog on myspace. I find myspace more and more ridiculous, really. It does not fit who I am on a regular basis--it only fits the “rockstar chaser” in me, generally, because that is the nature of myspace. It is for the under 30, hip and networking crowd, of which I am decidedly NOT a member anymore. Livejournal is visually too damned boring. And, lately it makes this ancient computer crash more than ever. I am finding the blog place Jodi uses, blogspot, very intriguing. It’s probably because Jodi makes her blog look so damned appealing and beautiful. I may undo my livejournal altogether and be creative and create something over at blogspot. Of course, a new computer would help. And I am wrapping my head around the fact that a digital camera is in my future. This 35mm stuff, although I love it, is just too…labor-intensive for these technological times. And, people look at me funny when I take out my Canon along with its zoom lens…like, “What the hell is that, and why is it so big?!”
I took my mother and the pup to Vermont over the weekend of 10/20, to check out a graduate program at Goddard College. Goddard is my alma mater, where I earned my first master’s degree in writing in 1995. I had not been back on the campus since I graduated (wait, there may have been one ill-fated tromp through the campus circa 1996, but I hardly remember events in 1996 unless they were colossal, and that is a good thing). Driving up that hill to the campus was one of pure joy for me. Once I was on campus, I was delighted and OVERjoyed to see the massive buildings and grounds projects that had vastly improved the campus itself. When I graduated, Goddard was in dire need of being attended to. In the time since, the college has suspended its on-campus programs and focused solely on low residency programs, in order to best sustain the college itself and obviously to make the repairs and give the attention needed to the grounds. It is absolutely gorgeous. Goddard, being NOT your typical college, has atypical buildings, atypical statuary, atypical everything. Examples: the theatre is in an old, refurbished haybarn…the classes are held in an old manor…there are stone gargoyles and green men and sheep heads spewing water in an intricately designed fountain system…there is a student-created maze made out of hedgerows…there is a small, meditation building on campus which allegedly has a beam on its front from which witches were hung in Salem, MA. That last one was one of the determining factors in the early 1990’s which convinced me that Goddard was for me.
This is the essence of Goddard: When I was there one semester for my 8 day residency, and much too timid at that time in my life to actually partake of the exoticness that is Goddard, I became aware one evening of a semi-distant pounding noise that weirdly seemed to have some syncopation to it. The next day I was told that tens of students, including some from my writing program (hi, Rob!) had gathered in the big field in the middle of the then-on campus housing quad and created a drumming circle around a huge bonfire, playing until the early morning hours. After peeking around the campus in 2007, I knew that despite the on campus residency program being suspended, an event like this could still happen.
Alas, I don’t think the graduate program I was scoping out is for me. Maine is a particularly snobbish and persnickety state when it comes to graduate programs and what they MEAN and how they FIT in the REAL WORLD once you graduate. That snobbery and persnicketiness comes from a deep-seated sense of practicality and no-nonsense perspective. It would be very difficult to explain to a professional licensing board how my master’s in psychology and counseling from Goddard College would apply to a social work practice. At this moment in my life, I do not want to spend a lot of energy explaining to a bunch of board-sitters how this could be so, I want to just DO the work and GET the licensure I need and GET ON ABOUT IT. Goddard is still too “alternative” for my world. Luckily, there is a semi-alternative program right here in Maine through our university system that will deftly fit my bill. I’m tired of fighting “the man,” I just want to move on in my education, be excited and titillated by it, and practice it without cocked eyebrows and more paperwork to “prove myself.” Now I have to decide just when I want to pursue this endeavor. It’s a huge commitment in every way, will take three years to complete, and will tug me in ways as a social worker that I probably have not been tugged yet. We’ll see.
The pup was awesome in Vermont. Our trip was only an overnight, and Stella spent a lot of time riding around in the car. It was much too short and much too harried for me, a traveler who deeply prefers the sort of meandering that cannot be accomplished in a quick drive to and fro. We saw a giant bull moose in Vermont, just at dusk, by the side of the road. Well, actually I saw it. It scared the bejeesus out of me. My mother did not see it, and wanted me to turn the car around in RUTTING SEASON at DUSK so she could see its lumbering and gigantic shape outlined in the failing light for herself. I absolutely refused. There were some other dumbasses in a small compact car pulled off the road, accosting the beast with a camera…let them get toppled over by a two ton animal, not us.
The foliage was spectacular and perfect, we had arrived just in time. I went out by myself at 8:30 at night to a tiny, ugly little convenience store to get sandwiches made by a 60 year old, Santa Claus-appearing man wearing a nasty apron, who kindly and methodically built the sandwiches just as I wanted right on the spot. There are no fast food restaurants in Marshfield, Vermont. Only the hole-in-the-wall convenience store which is more like an old fashioned Mom and Pop grocery store, complete with Vienna sausages, live bait, and molasses cookies on the counter together. The next morning we got hot Green Mountain coffee and home-made cinnamon buns from the Maple Valley Café, and Mom had her first ever cheddar cheese muffin. Despite the fact that I was groaning and whining from all the driving and Stella’s minute instances of acting out, it was a fabulous weekend junket. We even went into “the city” (Montpelier) and ate at KFC.
There are, I believe, three people who read my livejournal, and a variety of others who may read my blog on myspace. I find myspace more and more ridiculous, really. It does not fit who I am on a regular basis--it only fits the “rockstar chaser” in me, generally, because that is the nature of myspace. It is for the under 30, hip and networking crowd, of which I am decidedly NOT a member anymore. Livejournal is visually too damned boring. And, lately it makes this ancient computer crash more than ever. I am finding the blog place Jodi uses, blogspot, very intriguing. It’s probably because Jodi makes her blog look so damned appealing and beautiful. I may undo my livejournal altogether and be creative and create something over at blogspot. Of course, a new computer would help. And I am wrapping my head around the fact that a digital camera is in my future. This 35mm stuff, although I love it, is just too…labor-intensive for these technological times. And, people look at me funny when I take out my Canon along with its zoom lens…like, “What the hell is that, and why is it so big?!”