The Northward Contrail

Almost

Last day of keeping office hours is today. I've been industrious this week, freeing up a lot of space in my once-cluttered office, and it's now a happier place (well, as offices go). There's a lot of stuff I no longer need to keep, and a lot more that I'd kept but never used. Out it goes. I'll spend part of the morning sorting through, figuring out which documents need secure destruction and which won't. The stuff that doesn't will go in the recycling container. The stuff that needs secure destruction will be dealt with later.

I'm one of those folks with a weird filing system. My stuff normally ends up in a pile, or hurriedly put into a desk drawer, or in a stack on my desk. Not a good long-term strategy. Going through all my stuff has given me an excuse to actually get it organized, and that's been helpful. The trick will be if I can stick to that system of organization, or if I revert to my old system instead. Oh, well.

If nothing else, this week's efforts mean I've done something constructive with all this time, and not just sat around consuming bandwidth and watching the clock. That's a good thing.

The quiet

I'm being reminded why this time of year is a favorite, and that's the fact that nightfall begins earlier. By 6:30 this time of year it's pitch dark outside. I hate driving in it (anybody who lives in the woods will tell you why, for reduced visibility means you sometimes don't see Bambi until it's too late) but I love the evenings.

Last evening was a perfect example: sitting on the couch, computer in my lap, one cat snuggled up next to me and the other sleeping away on his blanket on the other couch. It was quiet in the house, with only the refrigerator's low hum and the ticking of the clock. Earlier in the day, my grades had been turned in and I'd cleaned up my office; I'd exercised, taken care of a few tasks. I'd had a not-bad cup of coffee. I had several new books to read, all of them on subjects that fascinate me. There are still tasks to get done in the coming weeks, sure, but they could wait; besides, I know how I'll handle them when the time comes. Last night was a night for enjoying the calm, the coffee, and the books.

I've talked before about how I savor travel, about the pictures I keep in my head of Alaska and of Seattle; about how when I'm in those places, I tell myself to enjoy the moment so those memories will sustain me through the turbulence and tedium of the school year. Sure, I love those moments, and I can't wait to return to make more memories. But I'd say moments like those last night are no less important. The work provides the means for the travel, but the work also provides the means for the books, and for the house out in the quiet woods, and for so many little things I too often take for granted. It's important to remember just how precious those things are, too.

This is no drill

Seventy years ago today Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States became a nation at war. There's no shortage of commemorations and remembrances of that event today, and as much as I'm interested in the history (having bought a paperback copy of Day of Infamy as a teenager and pretty much wearing it out), I wanted to give some attention to how it was covered by broadcast media that day.

There are several collections from radio out there, but I found myself most fascinated by this one, as well as this one. I'd also direct you to Bob Trout's firsthand recollections of that day, available here. (The version of the CBS bulletin you hear most often - with John Charles Daly saying "we interrupt this program" - isn't the way it really went that day. Quite a story behind that, involving a couple heroes of mine you ordinarily wouldn't associate with that kind of fudging, but I'll let you discover that little gem on your own.)

Believe it or not, there was effort made by fledgling television to provide news about the attack. I'll direct you to this brief yet fascinating article.

Above all, take a moment today to remember.

Waiting and waiting

Later this morning I'll go in, and the one task I absolutely must do will take no longer than ten minutes. Then there's a meeting I must attend, although I've already had an individual meeting on the matter and will therefore be doing little other than just sitting there putting in a required appearance. From there, for the rest of the week, it'll be me sitting in my office, using three hours of my life to do nothing but drill a hole in time while trying not to stay overly annoyed by certain things.

There's a reason I do this. Experience has taught me that as long as students are around, there's always the potential something will happen. The moment you're not there, that's when a Crisis will hit. That will be, for instance, when the student who had planned to graduate will have some last-minute complication (at least half the time, because of something they failed to do previously) that will require your guidance, if not intervention. Or there will be a phone call from the parent of a student, wanting something. Other times, it'll be someone else in the organization who needs you for something, or who needs something from you. Experience has taught me that these things always come when you're not there. So that's why I'm keeping office hours this week, even though no students are likely to come by: I'm there just in case. At least the hours I'm keeping are truncated, which helps. Just a little, but it helps.

I'm going to be very glad when exam week is over and the campus gets quiet - and even though I'll be on the road 48 hours later, I'll be happy when graduation is history, too.

Winter cleaning

My classes are done for the semester. I've pretty much tabulated the final course grades, and in general things are where they need to be right now. There are still chores to come - for instance, I need to write syllabi and touch up my course notes for the new semester, but I'll bring that stuff with me on the trip that's coming up and work on it then. With some luck, the change of venue will give me some new ideas, and I can return knowing all that work is done.

Meanwhile, there's a chore I'm happily undertaking in the office. I have boxes. Boxes full of stuff. Some of it is stuff I've kept for practical reasons, and some of it is stuff I kept for sentimental reasons, and some of it was stuff I was just too lazy to throw out. So it's just stuck around. It finally reached the point of "enough." I was tired of my office being so cluttered, and the more I thought about it, I realized just how little of the stuff I've kept has been stuff I've actually used. The truly important items have already been pulled out and scanned for my professional portfolio (which now has to be kept electronically, anyway). A lot of it is obsolete, stuff like procedures from two administrations ago or other forms that have long since been superseded and would only get sent back if I tried using them now. And some of it...well, I don't know why I kept it, but life is like that.

On Friday I was doing nothing but whiling away the hours in my office. I started hauling down the boxes from atop my bookcases, and I began to weed. By the end of the day, I'd filled one box completely full of papers that will be shredded, and had started to work on a second one. There's still a long way to go, including most of a four-drawer filing cabinet and two smaller ones (one of which is locked, and we can't find the key for it, but eventually I'll find a way). But the psychological uplift of decluttering can't be understated. When I knocked off for the day Friday, there was no small amount of happiness I took from what I'd done, and from how much neater things looked - and from knowing that out of all that clutter, only the important things now remain. It's a pretty cool thing, and I'm looking forward to getting back to it in a couple hours.