Oma's Visit

In June, my mom came to visit us for about a week.  It was great to see her, and it was a lot of fun to watch her relationship with Nora grow in person.  Nora is at an age now where she gets really excited anytime someone she knows from pictures is coming to visit her.  Before she sees someone for the first time in a while (whether it's a few weeks or a few months), she asks to see pictures of herself with that person (kids these days!).  Since Mom also sends Nora little video clips often, we spent several days getting ready for her visit.  I've said this before, but it's so nice to live in a time where Nora feels completely at ease with my mom right away, no matter how long it's been since she saw her in "real life," since she sees her on video and video chat fairly often.

We had great weather while Mom was here, so we got to enjoy a lot of outdoor activities!

We spent an afternoon at Aunt Vickie's pool: check out Nora's cool Portland Thorns hat Oma brought her!

We all got to go to an Orioles game together!  This is the only game I've made it to all year, and the Orioles got blown out-- so I'm glad I was with good company.  If they have to lose to someone, I'm happy for it to be the A's.

We went to a little festival at a park near our house that had crafts for Nora to try and included a hay ride (sans hay).

And Mom, Nora, and I went to Down's Park on the Chesapeake Bay to see the owls, play on the playground, throw rocks in the bay, and take pictures for Billy's Father's Day collage.

Sidebar: This is our third iteration of the "DAD" collage, but it's the first year Nora has been able to paint the letters herself!  Here are a couple of the out-takes I liked best:

While Mom was visiting, Nora's favorite song of the moment was "Say Hey (I Love You)." Originally sung by Michael Franti, I think Nora's teachers play her the dreaded beloved Kidz Bop version.  Here's a video of her singing the chorus!

Toddler Firsts

Nora may be rapidly approaching two, but she still has so many new things to experience!  This month has brought several firsts for Nora that we wanted to share with the family.

First Orioles game!
Since "sitting still" is not a skill Nora has shown any interest in mastering, we didn't think she'd be attending any games until next season.  However, Billy's aunt and uncle were recently unable to use their tickets to sit at the bistro tables in the all-you-can-eat section.  Since this would make it easy for us to be up and down with Nora, we appreciated the chance to take her to the ballpark!  As a bonus, Nora got to share the experience with her grandparents, great grand parents, and great aunt and uncle!  She and I also did one lap around the concourse, and she was quite a hit in her little Orioles dress.  She even knows how to cheer "Go Orioles!" and learned to shout "charge!" at the right moment while at the game. But I think eating chocolate ice cream with her dad seemed to be her favorite part, which is my own most distinct memory of attending A's games with my dad when I was a kid.

First Navy Football Game!
Although I took Nora to join the family at the Navy tailgate for one of the games last year, she was only there for an hour or two.  This time, we drove down to the stadium after she woke up from her nap to spend the whole afternoon there, and she loved the whole experience!  Although she didn't last long in the season ticket seats, she loved dancing around on the lawn in the general admission area.  Once again, she got to share this milestone with plenty of family members-- Gram, Pop, Uncle Brian, Aunt Vickie, and Tres all joined us for a great day!

First Haircut!
I trimmed Nora's bangs when she was a few months old, but it has been growing out so nicely since then that we've just let it grow.  And it sure has grown!  Lately, though it has been getting tangly after the bath and her curls have lost a lot of their spring.  We took her to a local kids haircut salon, but even they weren't quite prepared for her unique features.  She was so short and her hair was so long that the stylist couldn't really cut it well until she had Nora stand on the floor.  It wasn't easy to get her to look in the right direction, but she was calm and cooperative otherwise.  We were a little sad to say goodbye to her impressively long locks, but her layered clavicut is right on trend and her curls are full of bounce again!

Weekend Festivities

Now that the weather has gotten nice, we've settled into a nice routine of sorts for our weekends. We try to find a variety of outdoor activities that we think Nora will enjoy, we see which of our friends or family members are available to join us, and then all of the sudden another weekend is over.  I haven't been taking too many pictures lately because if we take our eyes off Nora for ten seconds she is off and running... but after realizing how few posts I've shared this month, I made a conscious effort to catch this weekend's outings on camera.

On Saturday, Nora and I went to the trail for a run while Billy did yard work, and when we finished, Nora danced around for a bit while two women played music at the ranger station.  In the afternoon we headed down to an outdoor craft fair near Nora's school.  We didn't find any crafts we couldn't live without, but Nora loved her first taste of a snowball.  (For non-Maryland natives, a "snowball" is like a sno-cone except bigger and more delicious because they don't skimp on the syrup.  And there are snowball stands everywhere.)  She must be a Marylander because she liked the chocolate syrup with marshmallow variety Billy favors-- but that was fine with me, because it meant I didn't have to share my cherry one.  Playing with this balloon kept her happily occupied until she spotted a "doggie" and repeatedly tried to run over to him.

This afternoon we took her to her first baseball game!  I see babies and toddler at baseball games all the time, but I have no idea how people manage this.  Are other babies and toddlers content to sit still?  Well, ours is not.  We decided we'd start by taking her to a Bowie Baysox game, but we didn't realize until today that it happened to be "Bark in the Park."  There were at least 50 dogs there, which means this outing was basically the best thing that has ever happened to Nora.  She kept shouting "doggie!" and running toward them.  This is when I find myself saying insane things like, "We say hello with our words, not with our hands."  Thankfully, all the dogs she approached were well behaved and all the dog owners were charmed by her.  After being given permission to pet what looked to me like a very tall greyhound, she reached up and hugged him right around the neck and said "awww!"  I apologized profusely for this decidedly un-gentle maneuver, but his owner just laughed, told me it was the cutest thing he had ever seen, and had his wife bring over their other tall greyhound to see she would do it again.  Her other favorite DOGGIE! was a short, stocky bulldog that let her rest her head on his back while tried (unsuccessfully) to wrap her arms around him.  (This dog had three human siblings, including a newborn, and in my conversation with his mom I learned that he is quite accustomed to rough affection.)

She did not love the Merry-Go-Round.  When it started going, she got this semi-terrified look on her face, but she let me talk her through it for a few spins before she asked to get "up up up!"  Once I picked her up she seemed to like the spinning, and when the carousel stopped she wanted to get back on the horse.  Of course.

As for the baseball, she did better than we were expecting.  The anecdotes above reveal that I had to take her out of the seating area several times to walk her around, but she did stand and watch the game for a while when we first got there, and then once we introduced milk and snacks she sat patiently on my lap for quite a while.  I loved going to baseball games with my family when I was little, so I hope that she will learn to enjoy watching the game, too.  It choked me up a little to see her there with her Daddy in her Orioles hat.  I can honestly distinctly remember the first time my dad took me to a game at Oakland coliseum, if recalling the long walk through the sloping cement concourse and the A's teddy bear Dad bought me counts as "remembering."

There was one key sign that she might be a baseball fan at heart: the clapping.  She joined in with the clapping so frequently and with such good timing that it was hard to believe she honestly has no idea what warrants a clap in baseball.

You know how in Field of Dreams, Ray's daughter Karen says "Daddy, there's a man on your lawn," and it means she can see what her dad dreams?  That is what I like to imagine is going on in this picture.

Notes From a Native Daughter

I've just returned from California. There are authors who know California the way I know California.  One of them is Joan Didion.  She begins "Notes from a Native Daughter" by suggesting that people from the East "have been to Los Angeles or San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon sun off Big Sur, and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California.  They have not been, and they probably never will be, for it is a longer and in many ways a more difficult trip than they might want to undertake, one of those trips on which the destination flickers chimerically on the horizon, ever receding, ever diminishing.  I happen to know about that trip because I come from California, come from a family, or a congeries of families, that has always been in the Sacramento Valley" (110-111).

My family has not always been in the Lompoc Valley, but it feels to me like I have.  And though I never lived there, this feels to me like the place where I grew up.  I recognize the smells.  I know how to pronounce the Spanish names even though I don't speak Spanish.  I still visit the same places there that I have visited since I was born.

This time around, I went to California to attend my dad's hometown memorial service, hosted by my grandparents and my Lompoc relatives.  First, we stood quietly as they placed a portion of Dad's ashes in a niche at the Lompoc Cemetery.  Vickie took this photo, which shows the view looking out from the memorial wall, across the Lompoc Valley.

I loved having the chance to talk to the people who came.  I only recognized a handful of them, but I spent the day hearing "I haven't seen you since you were...." various heights below waist level.  I got to meet people whose names I've heard my whole life.  I got to hear new stories about when my dad was a kid, when I was a kid, and when my grandparents were kids.  I got to see my dad's whole family- his parents, his aunts, my aunts and uncles, and every one of my cousins.  Everyone congratulated me on my pregnancy and told me how proud they are of my brother, my sister, and me.  (Thanks!  I am too.)  The sun was shining and the wind was howling, so it felt like an appropriate Lompoc day.  I missed Dad, but I missed him in a positive way, not a depressed way.  I still feel his absence all the time, but on that day, it felt more like he was just off talking to someone else the whole time.  That's the closest I've come to feeling his "presence" since he passed away.

Vickie and I spent the first few days at my grandparent's house.  They let me sleep in. Mimi made me breakfast and the same hot chocolate with whole milk and Nestle quick she's made me my whole life. Papa told me stories and made me laugh.  After such a rigorous couple of weeks, it felt great to sit on their couch with a full belly while I watched the French Open and to sit at the counter chatting with them about what's been going on around Lompoc.

On Sunday, we headed about an hour south to Santa Barbara with Mom to visit Gramma Kingston.  This was the first visit Vickie, Nate, and I have made to her new room in her retirement community, so it was nice to see her settled comfortably in a different place.

After chatting with her for a while in her room, we headed to the Montecito Country Club for dinner.  They used to live only a few blocks down the street from "the Club," so we spent a lot of time there as kids.  (I spent most of my time at the pool.)  My uncle and cousin met us for dinner, so we got to hear what everyone has been up to in Santa Barbara.  Vickie took this photo of the view from the Club, overlooking the ocean, which is the same view my mom had growing up.  Tough life!

After chatting with Gramma again on Monday morning, and watching some of Andy Murray's match, Nate, Vickie, Mom, and I headed to LA to Dodger Stadium.  Vickie and I had never been before, and Nate apparently has but doesn't remember it.  As far as I know, this is the only stadium that still serves chocolate malts.  Since I consumed at least one chocolate malt at every Oakland A's game I ever attended, the first thing I did was buy one.  It didn't have quite the right consistency, but it still came with a wooden spoon, so it was nostalgic nonetheless.  Vickie got us great seats, it was a fun game to watch, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  We spent a lot of time watching baseball when we were a young family, so even though this was the wrong team, it felt great to be at a game in California with Mom, Nate, and Vickie.  The stadium felt very 60s to me because there's cement everywhere (it was built around the same time as the Oakland Coliseum I grew up in), and its location inside Chavez Ravine gave it a cool feel.  Nate and I also noticed that there was a higher frequency of plastic surgery among attendees than we are used to seeing elsewhere.  I'm sorry to have to give the famous "Dodger Dog" a thumbs down, even though they were only $1 that night.  Mom took a photo of us at the game, decked out in our Lompoc Braves swag, which conveniently helped us blend in with all the Dodger blue.

Another highlight of the trip was getting to see my cousin Dalton's high school baseball team compete in two playoff games. Dalton is finishing up his senior season at Lompoc High School and is headed to Fresno State next year in hopes of walking on to their baseball team.  Last time I saw him play he was about 12, so it was fun to see that he is, as my grandfather says "a good little ball player."  The letter Dad left us to read after he passed away specifically instructed us to "go watch Dalton play baseball," so it also felt fitting that the Lompoc Braves had a home quarterfinal playoff game on the day of Dad's memorial.  In that game, I got to watch what were described in the next day's paper as "Chambers' heroics." Late in the game, Dalton made an excellent catch in right field and threw the ball home to complete a double play that prevented a run from scoring.  In the bottom of the 7th (the last inning in high school baseball), his team tied the game with two outs, after which Dalton ended the game by hitting a walk-off single that scored the winning run.  That advanced the Braves to the semi-final game, in which Dalton ended the opposing pitcher's no hitter with an excellent bunt that scored the go-ahead run, which turned out to be the winning one.

Dalton and the Braves are preparing for the CIF championship game as a type, so we'll be cheering him online from the opposite coast.  I hope we'll get to see Dalton play plenty more baseball, and I will enjoy getting to bring Billy next time around.

After our trip to Santa Barbara, Dodger Stadium, and Dalton's game outside LA, Nate and I returned to Lompoc to hang out at our Aunt Carrie's until Dalton's graduation.  Again, I really enjoyed having the chance to relax and spend a few lazy days with the family.  I spent another morning watching tennis at Mimi and Papa's and caught up on my reality TV with Nate, Carrie, and my Uncle Steve.  It's always hard for me to transition from the super-busy end of semester routine into the more laid-back summer routine-- I always feel like I should be doing something-- but being in a different place with plenty of family helped me make that transition smoothly.  While in Lompoc, I slept well and ate well, and aside from missing Billy and Oscar, I had nothing to complain about.

It was fun to be with the family for Dalton's graduation.  Since I haven't gotten to share too many of Dalton and Mackenzee's growing up milestones in person, I was glad to be there for his graduation.  It was funny to think that their parents, my Uncle Craig and Aunt Kim, were around my age now when I spent the most time in Lompoc.  I also enjoyed hearing about Kenz's freshman year, especially since she's the same age I was when Nate was a senior.  I forgot to count how many of us were in the stands to cheer Dalton on, but I find it hard to believe that any single graduate had a larger fan section.  (I can think of at least 21 people in the seats we saved for ourselves.)  At LHS the boys and girls sit on opposite sides of the aisle and walk out in pairs.  Below are photos of D making his entrance, Mimi and Papa watching proudly, and D giving his partner a piggy back ride off the stage after they accepted their diplomas.  (Note to self: Bring the bigger camera lens next time.)

I can tell Dalton has a great head on his shoulders, and I have such fond memories of finishing high school and heading to college that I can't wait to see what the future holds in store for him!

My whole trip back was relaxing, refreshing, and restorative.  I know Dad would have been so pleased with all the work his family put into planning the memorial, and he would have been happy to see all the people who turned out to pay their respects. Mostly, though, I think he would have been happy about the amount of time we got to spend together doing quintessentially Chambers family types of things.  I miss my dad terribly, but I know he wouldn't have wanted me to lapse into depression or to think of him with sadness as a result of his death.  He would have wanted me to continue doing the things he liked to do with the people we both love, so it was great to have a chance to do that.

I don't generally consider myself a Californian, even though I was born there and lived there until I was 10.  But when I go back to Lompoc and Santa Barbara, I feel like I came from California.  And not the California that I see in travel commercials or celebrity tabloids-- the California where people know my family history, where the wind blows, and where the air smells sweet and salty.  That California is less of a geographic place and more of a "place of the mind," as Joan Didion describes it.  I feel fortunate that even though my dad and I each moved away from home, this is still a place I can go.  And while I was there, one of Dad's (and Vickie's) favorite songs was on repeat in my head: Madonna's "This Used to be My Playground."



Don't hold on to the past?  That's too much to ask, indeed. Thank you to Mimi, Papa, Carrie, Steve, Kim, Craig, Dana, Nate, Vickie, Mom, Christine, Phillip, Dalton, Mackenzee, Gramma Kingston, Bob, and Blake for helping me to enjoy my trip, and to Billy and Oscar for sparing me for the week even though they couldn't join us.

("Notes from a Native Daughter" is the lead essay in the "Seven Places of the Mind" section of Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem.  I recommend it if you're looking for a good summertime read, especially if you share my nostalgia for California or my appreciation for thoughtful memoir.  I even mean this is a good book for regular people, not just literary studies people, since it has been recently brought to my attention that nobody really understands what I mean when I talk about books. : ) )

Lothlorien

I remember writing this "just as..." blog post two years ago, when I was taking a class on Tolkien, and I noticed that the sun always comes out for his characters right when things get really tough for them.  I also remember talking to Dad about it.  He thought it was really hilarious that I had agreed to spend an entire semester reading about hobbits, dwarves, elves, and ents.

Yesterday, after what seems like 6? 8? 10? 30? weeks of walking to Mordor, the sun came out for me.  I long ago set this day aside as my "day off" before I began working on paper #3, but if I could have planned exactly how the day would go, I couldn't have imagined it this good.

It started Tuesday evening, actually, when my program director emailed the announcement that I had won the "Kinnaird Prize" for the best master's student paper written in 2010.  (Remember when I did my research at the Library of Congress?  Or gave my talk at the conference in the fall?  It was that paper, on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred.)  I didn't win in the PhD category, but my friend Katie did, so that was icing on the cake.  I couldn't help thinking to myself (and, okay, to a few others), Not a bad showing from the girls from the waitlist.  It should be a rule that every time you get an award, you get to share it with a good friend you have always believed in, even when other people weren't quite sure about the both of you.

Yesterday itself began with sleeping in.  Then I drove to campus in the sunshine, with the windows down and the sunroof open, for our Graduate English Organization's end of semester lunch and award ceremony.  I got to chat with several professors and classmates that I haven't seen much this semester.  Trying to figure out if people were congratulating me on the baby, the essay prize, or both was not a bad way to start the lunch.

We had selected one of my favorite professors, Tita, for the "Outstanding Mentor" award, and since I was one of the ones who nominated her, our president asked me if I would collect some comments about her and present her with the award.  I get really emotional doing things like this, but I managed to (almost) hold it together while I read through them.  Tita has been such a source of encouragement and compassion for me this year that I was really touched to be able to tell her how great she was and read the comments others had shared.  She was completely shocked and honored by the award, and all she could say to me for about 10 minutes afterward was "thank you" and "I can't believe you didn't warn me!"  Tita is one of those women who is so brilliant, kind, generous, and humble that she almost seems too good to be true.  To get to be a part of showing her the department's appreciation for her tireless support of our students really made my day.  It should also be a rule that every time you win an award, you are allowed to present one to someone else that will mean a lot to them.  That was way better than just getting an accolade to add to my C.V.

Then I came home and tried to clean up some of the mess I've been making the past several weeks before Billy got home from work.  Then he, Vickie, my friend Danielle, and I went to the Orioles game-- my first of the season.  I haven't seen Danielle in far too long, the weather was perfect, and once I've been to a baseball stadium the summer feels like it can officially begin.

Thanks are in order for my cousin Jeff, the current assistant general manager for the Mariners, who left us the tickets for the game since his team was in town.  We got to see their Cy Young winning pitcher Felix Hernandez (Vickie and Billy knew this-- I did not), who I assume has had better nights.  But the best part for me was that Adam Jones went 4 for 4 and hit a two RBI triple that put the O's up 4-2-- the same Adam Jones the Mariners practically gave away in a 2008 trade to the Orioles for Eric Bedard (before my cousin had anything to do with their front office decisions).  To him it probably felt like winning a best paper award after getting put on the waitlist felt for me.  The Orioles' starting pitcher, Chris Tillman, was also one of the minor league prospects the O's picked up in that trade.

I told you it was a good day.  Extra sleep + sunshine + award receiving + award giving + seeing friends + baseball stadium + 3 of my favorite Marylanders + minor redemptions = one of the best days.

(I don't know how to explain Lothlorien without completely nerding out on you, but basically, it's a really nice and restorative place in the forest.  The members of the Fellowship find themselves welcomed there after they think Gandalf has died protecting them in the escape from Moria .  It stands against the evil forces in Middle Earth, kind of exists outside of time, and has really nice trees and singing.)

It's the Little Things

I realized it's been a while since I last wrote, and I thought I'd give a brief update on daily life in the Liz/Billy/Vickie/Oscar house.  It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks for me in terms of schoolwork, but I've been trying to stop and savor the nice little moments along the way.

Yesterday, to commemorate three months since we lost Dad, I thought I was finally ready to listen to the CD of "Wedding Ideas" songs he made me before Billy and I got married.  I remembered a few of the songs he'd put on there, but most of them I'd forgotten.  I cried softly most of my way into work, but every couple of tracks he had inserted something goofy, including "The Chicken Dance," which made me laugh.  On my way home after a long day, "Miss You Like Crazy" came on at the end of the CD, and I started to cry so hard I had to pull over.  I realize it's a love song, not a father/daughter song, but I know why my Dad put it on there.  The way the tides have turned since his death hit me really hard, and then I realized it was Natalie Cole singing.  Since she sang the daughter half of "Unforgettable" (an earlier track on the CD, which Dad and I danced to at the wedding), it was all just too much for me.

Most of yesterday was better.  I told Billy that someone must have sent out a memo saying it was designated Pat-Liz-on-the-Back Day.  When I went in to the coffee room, one of our notoriously curmudgeonly professors made a point of telling me what a good job he thought I (and my group) had done presenting questions and leading discussion during our Theory Colloquium on Friday.  Since he is a nice guy but so hard to impress, and since Theory Colloquium is generally such a brain busting experience for me, I appreciated the sentiment.  Later, one of my current professors stopped by the business office to ask a question, after which she reminded me that I had to be ready to lead discussion for 10 minutes during class.  I said I would go first if no one else volunteered, which prompted a complimentary conversation about how I am always prepared.  She told me how much she appreciates that I do the reading each week and come to class ready to talk.  During the break in that class, I was chatting with a classmate from the Women's Studies program in the bathroom when she randomly said "I just wanted to tell you that I love listening to you in class.  Every time you talk I just think, 'yes!'"  I also found some great material for my research projects in the Katherine Anne Porter archives, so all in all it was a rare day of complete gratification.

A few other equally comforting and fun things have happened in the past few weeks, so I thought I'd share them, too, especially since they're the things I would have loved to talk to Dad about if he was still around.

A few weekends ago, before I met Danielle to catch up over breakfast, I stopped by the Annapolis Striders 10 mile race I wasn't running to pick up my award from last season.

I'm disappointed that I haven't felt up to competing in any of the races this year, but it was nice to get my first "trophy" since middle school and to be reminded that during a time when I had more control over my circumstances, I accomplished the goal I set for myself through sheer strength of will.  Breakfast with Danielle was refreshing, too, and left me feeling ready to head home to tackle another long day of homework.

Vickie invited me to look at an apartment complex in Baltimore with her.  I tried to keep my opinion to myself until she shared hers, but she liked it as much as I did, and she moves in at the end of the month.  The two bedroom apartment seems HUGE for a first apartment, the location is great, and she already has her first roommate lined up.  It has been fun to hear how much she likes her job at Hopkins, and I am looking forward to seeing how life unfolds for her.  If I was a 24 year old, young, professional female working in the city, I would love to live where she's living, so I can't wait to hear about all the fun she's going to have.  (And I don't think I'll mind visiting her at her pool, which is right on the harbor.)

We celebrated Billy's birthday in a low-key fashion, but the weather was nice, our moods were good, and for a few more months he and I are technically the same age, which means he can't call me old!  He also agreed to spend our anniversary weekend attending the US vs. Spain Davis Cup tie in Austin, Texas, which I am really excited about.  I've always wanted to watch Davis Cup tennis, I've always wanted to go to Austin, and it's been a while since Billy and I got to go away alone together, so I am really looking forward to the trip.

Baseball season opened and the Orioles are off to a promising start.  They've already won a bunch of games, and more importantly for me, they look like they are having fun out there.  They have been like a different team since Buck Showalter took over as their manager, and it makes being a fan much more fun.  It also makes me realize that one person really can make a big difference.

Each year the English department puts together an online-published journal of the best papers from English 101, which is the "intro to writing" course I taught in the fall.  When I realized that one of my students was among the 15 or so students whose papers were chosen to be included, I sent him an email to congratulate him on his accomplishment.  He wrote me back to thank me for all of my help with his papers, to tell me how much he got out of the class, and to say that I'm the first one who ever made English "exciting."  Maybe he caught me at a particularly fragile moment, but it made me cry.  So often students want to blame the teacher when they do poorly, but this was the first time a student wanted to give me part of the credit for his personal accomplishment.  Teachers are so rarely thanked for how much work they do, and students are much quicker to complain than to praise, so to hear all of that in one simple, kind email really touched my heart.  And reminded me why I keep wanting to teach... which was a good reminder to be given.

And, finally, when I plugged in my camera to get that photo of my trophy, I realized that because the camera has been sitting on the dresser for the past few weeks, I have several goofy shots of Oscar burrowed in the bed to share.  I don't know if anyone else finds these as amusing as I do, but he always helps me remember to stop and smile at the little things.  So happy Wednesday, everybody, from our house to yours.  I hope you're enjoying the little things along the way.

(I don't know anything about this book, It's the Little Things: An Appreciation of Life's Simple Pleasures, but I liked the title.)

Death in the Afternoon

When I was teaching high school, we talked about how Hemingway coined the term "grace under pressure,"  and I showed them his episode of A&E's "Biography," which explains Hemingway's relationship to bullfighting, about which he wrote Death in the Afternoon.  In short, Hemingway had a deep respect for bullfighting because he considered matadors to be the individuals who best demonstrated grace under pressure.

One of the reasons I love sports so much is because they afford athletes opportunities to demonstrate grace under pressure.  This week we got two great examples.

Pitching a perfect game in baseball is a demonstration of grace under pressure-- history shows that maintaining your mental composure enough to keep making outs until the very end is an almost impossible feat.  We all know that Jim Joyce botched the call at first base and ruined Armando Galarraga's chance to have a perfect game recorded in the books, but what impressed me most was Galarraga's immediate response to the call.  If you watch the video, you notice that for one split second when he knew he had made the out, he started to celebrate-- but when the call was made, he just smiled, stared at Jim Joyce, and then walked back to the mound.  HE SMILED!   And then he recorded the next out!  There was a lot of hype after the game, and all the analylists practically started singing kumbaya because Joyce apologized and Galarraga said "nobody's perfect" (even though he had been)... but what I'll remember is that smile.  My brother Nate was impressed by this moment, too, and wrote on my facebook wall, "Someday I'll tell kids about the grace with which Armando Galarraga handled himself in that situation."

Maybe that smile grows out of ten years spent in the minors before being called up to the majors.  Maybe it comes from the maturity of being able to recognize the strength of one's accomplishment even without official recognition of that accomplishment.  In the Women's final at the French Open, we also saw an experienced player earn the chance to make good on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Before the French Open, Francesca Schiavone had never advanced beyond the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam tournament.  She'd only won three tournaments in her whole 12 year career.  She was the heavy, heavy underdog.

I'll admit that when I started watching the match, I wanted Sam Stosur to win.  I'd been impressed by her giant-killing journey to the final: she'd already upset Serena Williams and Justine Henin, the two favorites to win the tournament, and had destroyed former world #1 Jelena Jankovic in the semis.  I was already imagining how exciting it would be to experience in person the Aussie hype that would have been around Stosur at the Australian Open in January had she won her first slam on Saturday.  But even though no one gave Schiavone a chance, she came out with a game plan that handcuffed Stosur, and it became impossible to cheer against her.  With the chance to win the match in the second set tiebreaker, when most players participating in their first slam final against a heavy favorite would have tightened up and choked, Schiavone took risky shots, executed them perfectly, and began jumping for joy after each winner.  Aside from Serena and maybe Kim Clijsters, the women in today's game seem afraid to rise to the challenge in this way.  I generally find the WTA tour uninspiring precisely because it so sorely lacks these kind of grab-the-bull-by-the-horns moments.

But Schiavone is evidently not our average WTA player.  Afterward, Schiavone said "I took it, and I didn't lose the chance. I didn't care about nothing. I want to take that [ball] and play my tennis. It was the moment."  Peter Bodo also reports that when she was asked how she accomplished something so much greater than anyone had ever expected of her, she responded, "Every morning that you wake up, you work to do something like this. So maybe it was far away in reality, but here [she pointed to her heart] it was never that far."

Thanks, Armando Galarraga and Francesca Schiavone, for reminding me this week how much the human mind is capable of achieving.  For reminding me that the moments when we are placed under the most pressure are also the moments when are given the opportunity to surpass everyone's expectations.  For demonstrating, as Schiavone said, that "This is mean that everybody have the chance to be who really you want to be, and to do everything in your life. This is what's happen to me."

Five Apples

We're just plugging along here in Millersville.  I'm trying to get as much work done as I can each week so I can finish up my semester successfully.  I'm ready for a real break!

Today, I went with Billy, Anne-Marie, and Katie to see the Cezanne and American Modernism exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art.  In honor of Five Apples, the only painting from the exhibit that came from Gertrude and Leo Stein's collection of Cezanne paintings, I'll recount for you the five memorable moments from my week.

Cezanne, Five Apples

1) Cezanne and American Modernism
Attending art exhibits usually just makes me feel insecure about how little I know about art and the artistic movements that coincide with the literary movements I know so well.  I was hoping to learn something about the connections between artistic modernism and literary modernism, but I was still interested to see how American painters were influenced by Cezanne's work.  It was exciting to see a painting that used to belong to Gertrude Stein and which used to hang in her house in Paris.  Even if she did tell her brother she'd keep the Picasos and he could have all the Cezannes when they decided to part ways.  Plus, it was fun to get lunch and have a chance to spend some time with Anne-Marie and Katie away from campus.

2) Navy/Hopkins Lacrosse Game
I've been to precisely two lacrosse games in my life-- both of them between high school teams-- but I'm glad Billy and I decided to check out this matchup yesterday.  It turned out to be a nice day, and the game was really exciting!  I always enjoy watching sports I don't understand.  It's fun to try to figure out what's going on.  Navy fell behind 0-5, but they ended up winning 9-8 in overtime, so that kept things interesting.  Afterwards, the announcer said that Navy had previously lost to Johns Hopkins 30+ times in a row, so then it made a lot more sense that the players and fans stormed the field after Navy scored the sudden death goal.  We got to the game a bit early for the "closeout sale" of Navy merchandise, so Billy got a few new items and also this cool picture of the empty stadium.

You can read Billy's recap of the game here.

3) Happy Birthday Nana!

On Wednesday, we went over to Nana and Mr. Dick's to celebrate Billy's grandmother's 79th birthday.  She has been pretty sick lately, and spent a bit of time in the hospital, so it was good to see that she seemed to be feeling much better.  We tried out some new pizza that I liked and Mr. Dick's lemon cake was as delicious as always!

4) Priscilla Wald Visits UMd
Our department is currently recruiting Duke University professor Priscilla Wald.  She came to campus on Wednesday to give a lecture and talk to graduate students.  I found her enthusiasm for her work and teaching really inspiring.  Her current project works on the intersections between science and narrative, so I was pretty interested in her suggestions about why the sciences and the humanities need each other.  I am hoping I get a chance to read her most recent book, Contagious, over the summer, even though it doesn't relate to my own work.  And I am really hoping she decides to join our faculty!

5) O and the O's
Last night, after the Orioles lost another lead and fell to 2-16, Billy snapped this photo of Oscar's dejected expression.

Luckily, the Orioles finally won their third game today, so he is feeling like himself again.  He's currently walking around the back of the couch as if he were a cat.