I have much to say about this article on being a “slow professor,” but first I want to explain my absence from this blog for four and a half months. I haven’t been well. You wouldn’t know my secret if you saw me on the street or on campus. However, if you talked to me, you might note I […]
[Continue reading...]Over the past year, I’ve been experiencing some brain fogginess. I don’t know whether to chalk it up to even less time spent exercising (because of longer hours at work), perimenopause knocking at the door, or to new depression meds I started at the beginning of 2015, but the result has been a decided decline in the […]
[Continue reading...]As I look forward to 2016, I also want to recall how, in 2015, Marci gave me the STAR word “difference.” I printed the word on a paper star and posted it above my desk at work. Lots of things were different this year. I turned 40, a cultural milestone, especially for women. Already I can feel the […]
[Continue reading...]This is another post about small steps adding up. A few years back, I spent several weeks eating vegan and sugar-free. The experiment worked wonderfully–I felt better physically than I had for a very long time, I looked great, and my thinking clarified. At this moment, I’m not ready to commit to that kind of […]
[Continue reading...]Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, educator and author Parker Palmer has committed to five revolutions. I share his social justice concerns and am working for these causes in my own small ways. However, I have also overcommitted myself in my professional and personal lives, and so for 2016, I’m not just resolving to refocus and […]
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Bad things, I’ve been reminded by several people lately, come in threes. The threats, the heart attack scare. And now a death in the family. On Friday, physical education and women’s sports lost a huge champion—in every sense of the word—in the passing of my aunt, Joan Van Blom. Joan’s life and career illustrate why it’s wise to […]
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I’m not prone to anxiety, but the social media threats from the gun extremists have kept me awake in the middle of the night since I received them. Last Wednesday night, I woke up every hour with increasing chest pain. I assumed it was a combination of my asthma and the bad air—though the air has […]
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(Trigger warning: This post contains references to sexual assault, as well as epithets related to the female anatomy.) So. . . It’s been an interesting summer. Alas, I cannot tell you about most of it because last week I was singled out by an, ahem, Second Amendment enthusiasts’ group, which posted on its Facebook page […]
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Tomorrow I turn 40. Forty! I know many of my readers have already reached or long surpassed that milestone. However, 40 feels fantastic and momentous to me because I didn’t know if I would make it this far. Those decades of depression sometimes made it seem, moment to moment and in the aggregate, as if […]
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Image by Thomas Hawk, and used under a Creative Commons license When I listen to testimony before Idaho’s state legislative committees, I invariably hear—mostly from conservative speakers, but not exclusively—multiple people mention how many years they have been “citizens of Idaho.” I thought this was an interesting slip of the tongue. After all, those testifying […]
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