News Roundup

For your reading pleasure and because we don't want you to be embarrassed when you don't know what's going on, we now present a roundup of the latest news and neighborhood happenings. Also, one poem and one very good word.

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Gail Adams, retired WVU English professor and one of TCH's most favorite fiction writers, emails to say that she and husband Tim, our former department chair, as most of you will recall, are keeping busy in and around ever-smaller Florence, Texas (population down this past year to 987): "Tim and I sneak away for long weekends or short - Galveston and then Waco where we ate at the Elite Cafe made infamous by journalists covering Branch Davidians' stand-off and he's biking 25 - 50 miles on these charity rides and while he does I swim in the hotel pools and read." Sounds pretty nice to the Tenants whose parents never let them do fun stuff like hang out in former Branch Davidian-related hot spots.

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The Sigma Tau Delta "So You Want to Go to Graduate School?" meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 12, 8:00 p.m. in the Mountain Room in the 'lair. This is the sobering and essential and sometimes inspiring information session for all undergraduates—literature, professional writing, creative writing—interested in graduate study in English. Professors Conner, Ballentine, and Samyn will enlighten and delight attendees with tales of applying and getting accepted and actually going to graduate programs... and then getting the heck out of them.

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This past Saturday's "Boobapalooza" benefit concert for the fight against breast cancer was quite a success and your favorite bloggers attended. Professor Allen drank pink lemonade; Professor Samyn had some iced tea; they both enjoyed rather yummy sugar cookies decorated with a pink ribbon of icing. Professor Claycomb and family were also in attendance, but, alas, this blogger cannot recall what fascinating things they ate or drank. Next time she promises to pay better attention.

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Heard on the street, in South Park, during a football "game":

Pre-teen boy #1: I want to tackle someone really bad. Can I tackle you?

Pre-teen boys #2 & 3: (silence)

Ok, have at it, theorists and fiction writers. Surely you can do something with this.

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And now, a poem appropriate to the season, by Lisa Russ Spaar, who will be reading on campus on Thursday, October 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Robinson Reading Room.

The Geese

Just as God is not my sorrow,

neither does this prow

above our gable where a dream

has died owe me any more than life

has promised us an ending. Though it has.

Is it true the sadder we are, the more things stand still?

Rudder of dusk, perhaps this love

of shape betrays my taste for death.

Even more, I love their going—pioneers—

beyond my knowing.

Isn't that gorgeous? From Lisa's most recent book, Satin Cash (Persea 2008). That's a Dickinson reference, in case you were wondering: "I pay — in Satin Cash — / You did not state — your price —"

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Finally, a word we're fond of just now: cavalcade. Something about roundups and Gail in Texas brought this to mind. An old movie word too, right? Anyway, a very pleasing crash of sounds. Something icy in the middle of it. But not in a bad way. More like the sound ice makes as it's tumbled into a glass. More like "let's sit around and talk about it."

It's already Week 6 of the semester. Can you believe it? Make it a good one, Tenants.