[Blank]-in-the-loop Writing Warm-ups

/ Derek Mueller

Having posted and circulated by email, listserv, and social media, this latest CFP for an upcoming Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative blog carnival on [blank]-in-the-loop writing, I thought why not list a magnitude order of variations in the style of skipping rope one hundred times.

Shoop-in-the-loop writing; Chicken-in-the-loop writing; Dog-park-in-the-loop writing; Password-reset-in-the-loop writing; Advil-in-the-loop writing; What-am-I-forgetting-in-the-loop writing; Cheese-snack-in-the-loop writing; Medical-emergency-in-the-loop writing; Zoom-in-the-loop writing; Government-shutdown-in-the-loop writing; Facism-in-the-loop writing; Soup-in-the-loop writing; iOS-update-in-the-loop writing; K-pop-in-the-loop writing; Overzealous-editor-in-the-loop writing; Cancer-diagnosis-in-the-loop writing; Blizzard-in-the-loop writing; Retirement-in-the-loop writing; Teacup-pomeranian-in-the-loop writing; MLB-opening-day-in-the-loop writing; Sparkly-CFP-in-the-loop writing; Chronic-pain-in-the-loop writing; Dr.-Pepper-in-the-loop writing; Divorce-in-the-loop writing; Dongle-in-the-loop writing; Union-negotiations-in-the-loop writing; Instagram-stories-in-the-loop writing; Supreme-court-ruling-in-the-loop writing; The-Pitt-in-the-loop writing; Laundromat-in-the-loop writing; Debt-in-the-loop writing; Coffee-shop-closure-in-the-loop writing; Fasting-in-the-loop writing; Optometrist-in-the-loop writing; COVID-in-the-loop writing; Tenure-clock-in-the-loop writing; Almonds-in-the-loop writing; Gossip-in-the-loop writing; Burnout-in-the-loop writing; Caffeine-in-the-loop writing; Pomodoro-in-the-loop writing; Trouble-in-the-loop writing; Donut-in-the-loop writing; Nap-in-the-loop writing; Wine-in-the-loop writing; Outrage-in-the-loop writing; Microsoft-in-the-loop writing; Grandmother-in-the-loop writing; Postcard-in-the-loop writing; Baklava-in-the-loop writing.

Faculty-Activity-Report-in-the-loop writing; Sushi-lunch-in-the-loop writing; Flat-tire-in-the-loop writing; Record-player-in-the-loop writing; Absurdity-in-the-loop writing; Grue-in-the-loop writing; Inforg-in-the-loop writing; Funeral-in-the-loop writing; Full-moon-in-the-loop writing; Scorpio-in-the-loop writing; The-Fool-in-the-loop writing; N95-in-the-loop writing; I-696-in-the-loop writing; Doo-wop-in-the-loop writing; Reddit-r/-in-the-loop writing; Privacy-in-the-loop writing; Kevin-Bacon-in-the-loop writing; Genus-in-the-loop writing; Dada-in-the-loop writing; Extreme-tabs-in-the-loop writing; Reply-all-in-the-loop writing; JPG-in-the-loop writing; Beloved-in-the-loop writing; Kismet-in-the-loop writing; Cilantro-in-the-loop writing; Quark-in-the-loop writing; PowerPoint-in-the-loop writing; True-crime-in-the-loop writing; Bugonia-in-the-loop writing; Loopsmaxxing-in-the-loop writing; Barbecue-in-the-loop writing; Red-40-in-the-loop writing; Melatonin-in-the-loop writing; Pollen-in-the-loop writing; Spreadsheet-in-the-loop writing; SRTOL-in-the-loop writing; Mirror-in-the-loop writing; Preschool-dropoff-in-the-loop writing; Life-Savers-in-the-loop writing; Quill-pen-in-the-loop writing; Inkstains-in-the-loop writing; Mustard-biscuits-in-the-loop writing; Alexa-in-the-loop writing; Monsters-in-the-loop writing; Therapist-in-the-loop writing; Tomorrow-in-the-loop writing; Down-Slope-in-the-loop writing; Florida-in-the-loop writing; Velcro-in-the-loop writing; Tootsie-Pop-in-the-loop writing.

While co-drafting the CFP, I read in some definitional place that a loop is a type of line which curves at rate so that it eventually crosses its own path. The self-crossing takes time. The line could wander and never loop; the line could redirect too sharply and become an angle rather than a curve. Thus, the loop forms out of an away trajectory and a rate of return.

Name-Image-Ficus (NIF) – Tournament Pick’em Invitation

/ Derek Mueller
Photo by Oleksii S on Unsplash

You have better ways to spend your time? Impossible. For the 22nd consecutive year, March is when we squander 30 minutes daydreaming about NCAA men’s basketball tournament glory by participating in the Earth Wide Moth Tournament Pick’em, Name-Image-Ficus (NIF), such a figging awesome event as it is. Since forever and again, we’re using Fibonacci scoring with points increasing round by round (2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21). You’ll also receive bonus points for upset picks (+1 point for upsets in the first round; +2 for upset picks thereafter).

Everyone is welcome to join, so pass along the invitation. You still have a few days, but time is thinning for studying up, pitching pick-em darts at the pick-em dart board, or finding any friend in western Oklahoma who can talk you out of rooting for the Big Twelve champion. What even are athletic conferences anymore?! 

So, sign up! It’s free to join this year’s group on Yahoo!, Name-Image-Ficus (NIF) (ID#33775). If you have questions, you can reach me via email at dereknmueller at gmail.com. Invite your friends, frenemies, faux-frenemies, weed eaters, apple pickers, affordable flooring installers, Norwegian Elkhound groomers, panels of judges, blueberry juicers, greeters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, pontoon boat welders, AATA bus drivers, dancing bear merch peddlers, yard regraders, trail walkers, etc. The group has space for the next forty-something who sign up. Egoless, impermanent stakes: reputations are made (and quickly forgotten) year after year.

Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em 🏀
Group: Name-Image-Ficus (NIF) (ID#33775)
“22nd annual.”

Firm up your selections any time between the selection show on Sunday evening, March 15, and first tip of the round of 64, sometime around noon EDT on Thursday, March 19.

Added: Michigan outdoes UConn, 69-63, for the tournament championship. Timothy wins the bracket pick’em with 165 points (45 of 63 correct), followed by Joe with 159 points (44 of 63 correct), and in third, yours truly, with 156 points (42 of 63 correct).

A Note to Commemorate

/ Derek Mueller

A note to commemorate the day when, around 4 p.m., the more or less regular into-the-run hour after a day of free-ranging, only four chickens (Tiny Honey, Betty, Mo, and Lightfoot) were in the yard and Perla was nowhere to be found. And to commemorate the rallying of a couple of different search parties, A. and Feta looking ALL OVER the place for any trace of a feather, then me doubling down and canvassing EVERY steep, slippy embankment at the edge of the yard for an hour. In my mind goddesses merciful I climbed the entire Blue Ridge Mountains. And to commemorate how as A. left for her evening volunteer hours a short time later, she asked me if I thought Perla might be alive, and I said, no, I don’t think so. She must’ve gotten scooped by the strongest and stealthiest of creatures mid-morning because I was outside all afternoon and though I didn’t do a head count, I was sure I would have heard such an incident, or Mo would have raised a fit, or there would have been a floof of feathers to show for the vanishing. And to commemorate how at around 6 p.m. I went outside to bring the four chickens some bereavement meal worms and to spend a moment with them in quiet observance, only to see Perla there on the first terrace near the pines, strutting toward me, not wanting to miss the stories we were going to tell about her, or maybe just checking to see if an afternoon fugue state would improve her place in the pecking order. tldr; Perla is fine and the five are safely in their run for the night.

Perla (left) says to Betty (right), she says, “I got lost!”
Perla evidently hadn’t changed her timekeeping for daylight savings time.
The flock enjoys a few more late day free-ranging minutes together.

Cleveland 2026 Cs

/ Derek Mueller

Cleveland 2026 Cs in the rearview mirror, 400 miles to Virginia yesterday, the few photos I took (or 📸 friends sent me), like a flipbook with two-thirds of its pages missing: 24th story strictly fog in the forecast; 8 a.m. Friday on bandwidths; skyline; presenterism; more cowbell; Lake Erie(lhonan), which I learned translates to ‘long tail’; 8 a.m. Saturday on worknets; two of VT’s best!; and once back at the holler, Feta admiring my tree climbing skills. Saw some fantastic presentations and always-always rewarding to see so many longtime friends. #travelog #4c26 #cleveland

Added: I should have mentioned that Cs feels livelier when it coincides with a major fencing tournament, hundreds of young competitors scurrying through the convention center hallways with foils drawn and us academics trundling with the slow confidence that says, ‘Younguns, impale me if you must but I won’t feel it because I am MADE of scar tissue.’ 😆

  • Thick fog viewed from the Hilton Downtown Cleveland.
  • Friday 8 a.m. presentation on temporal bandwidth and disciplinarity.
  • Cleveland downtown skyline on midday Friday.
  • Friday 8 a.m. presentation, “presentism” slide, invigorated that the loose wires on the projection system held their connections.
  • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Saturday Night Live exhibit–the costume and accessories from the Blue Oyster Cult more cowbell skit.
  • A few of Lake Erie.
  • Nine photos from the 2026 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Cleveland, Ohio.
    Saturday 8 a.m. prespondent slide, What’s in a Worknet?
  • Photo with two of VT’s outstanding RW PhD students, Gideon and Temi.
  • Back at the holler on Saturday evening and Feta is enamored of my tree-climbing skillset after so many days of travel.

Reading Rebalance

/ Derek Mueller

A drizzly Sunday mid-February. Woke up to onomatopoeia percussing in downspouts out the window. “Good news. At least they’re not frozen solid any more.” I expected that feeding and watering the chickens first thing would be slipperier, which before I ventured out with the watering vessels detoured to listening karaoke-style to Paul Simon’s 1977 Slip Sliding Away and then to Little Richard’s 1957 recording, Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’), an associative path unfolding from the difficult to track down Simon quotation in which he says, “I didn’t originate that title. It came from that Little Richard song Slippin’ and Slidin’,” slip sliding owing to slippin’ and slidin’. Mo crowed. By that point I was filling the water carriers and delighting in the chickenicity implied in Little Richard’s parenthetical, peeping and hiding. Moments later, imagine what a changed chore it was to find that each footfall held without trouble, a better than expected grip in the mud-ice-grass trivium.

Among the rewards of a sabbatical, aka research leave, aka duty off campus is that I have made it a point to reclaim studying; with a little bit more time than usual, studying fans out again. It is possible for these few months to chip away at a bigger writing project, to hold a scatterplot of meetings each week (usually with grad students), and, to lay out a mosaic of readings purposefully juxtaposed. Read for accidents, surprise angles. With a little bit of time, eclectic reading totters again; its balance otherwise, in entrained semesters, is prone to tilting heavily toward the necessary, pragmatic, and bureaucratic anchors for professional attention.

Past few days a rewarding zigzag has come from clicking along in PDFs of Meg Sweeney’s Mendings (2023), Roland Bathes’ Mourning Diary (1977), and Tim Ingold’s 1993 article, “The Temporality of the Landscape.” Sweeney’s book is helping me think about gone noting and about the personal-theoretical in familial memory work; it’s a marvelously visual book, too, and at 47k words helps me gain a feeling for the scope of my current project. Ingold is (maybe?) jogging some of the earliest motivations for worknets when I drafted that 2015 Composition Forum article and plotted its rationale using Lines: A Brief History (2007). I will have occasion early next month in Cleveland to say a few words (as “prespondent”) about worknets, about what I imagined they would activate in service of reading in service of research design beyond the typical ramp-ups to literature reviews. The gist of this is that worknets promote reading expectant of wider and weirder flight paths; literature reviews are prone to formulism, IMRAD-pleasing, over-torqued to function. Which is another way of saying a generous comparison will take more time and nuance; I tend to be nap time! with lit reviews. What was the last unforgettable lit review you read?

The Barthes reading is just because I hadn’t read it before. It’s a fast read because it amounts to 262 pages, 14k words or so, of translated notes, journal entries, and introspective asides. They’re diaristic, abrupt, reflective in a manner of ritualized self-noticing. How am I doing? How am I doing now? Richard Howard, translator of several Barthes books, wrote in the afterword about how the entries served as warm-ups, as RB would cut paper into quarter sheets, then type the date-stamped missives as an exercise, perhaps, to shift from the underlayment of private grief to a more readerly register—although, that said, Henriette is unavoidable in his other writing around that time, late 1970s, Camera Lucida and Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.

I highlighted sixteen passages, some as small as words or even symbols, like the Φ on p. 177, with a footnote that RB used the phi as a symbol for photograph in Camera Lucida. The highlights glowed brighter in the second half as can be seen in this highlighted contact sheet, where just over half of the sixteen annotations landed on or after p. 200.

Figure 1. Highlighted contact sheet, or the sixteen annotated Mourning Diary pages.

Here are a few of the corresponding passages, which I will end with because the afternoon is a’slipping.

July 18, 1978

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

August 18, 1978

To share the values of the silent dailiness (to manage the cooking, the cleaning, the clothes, the choice and something like the past of objects), this was my (silent) way of conversing with her. —And this is, her no longer being here, how I can still do it.

October 3, 1978

The profound modesty she had—that made her possess, not no belongings at all (no asceticism), but very few belongings—as if she wanted, at her death, that there would be no “getting rid of” what had belonged to her.

January 30, 1979

We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.

A Feeling for the Data Set

/ Derek Mueller

For the last week or so I have been collaging together small pieces readying for a guest presentation and workshop in Virginia Tech’s ENGL6364: Research Design in Rhetoric and Writing tomorrow afternoon, a presentation and workshop I’m calling “A Feeling for the Data Set.” I taught the class in 2020 and 2022, so I have a feel for it, and now—the 2024 & 2026 rounds—it is being taught by my friend and (former, in the sense that I no longer work at VT) colleague, Dr. Shakil Rabbi. The class is reading an old friend, Network Sense; my prompt for the visit is to talk about how to create a data visualization from a large, unwieldy data set.

A Feeling for the Organism
A Feeling for the Organism, Evelyn Fox Keller, 1983.

As moving would have it most of my books and materials are in boxes in Ann Arbor at the moment, so I had to approach this a little bit differently and work only with what I had on these few small shelves at home. Thus, the setup sent me back to Evelyn Fox Keller’s book, A Feeling for the Organism (1983), a biography of 1983 Nobel prize winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, whose research on maize led her to insights about “jumping genes,” or gene transposition—the abruptive events that cause genetic mutations. With the purpose of contextualizing the lag in the reception of McClintock’s work, Keller wrote that her prose was alleged by some to be “difficult to follow” (10). Keller continues, “When she made these ideas public in 1951, in 1953, and again in 1956, in spite of the fact that she had long since established her reputation as an impeccable investigator, few listened, and fewer understood. She was described as ‘obscure,’ even ‘mad'” (10).

I won’t have time on Tuesday evening to go into McClintock’s ingenious research nor into Keller’s brilliant and accessible account on McClintock’s life and career. I will mention it briefly at the beginning, nevertheless, because it has provided me with what I consider an engaging, intuitive analog in the “A Feeling for” precept. Later in the book, in Chapter 12, “A Feeling for the Organism,” Keller wrote, “Over and over again, [McClintock] tells us one must have the time to look, the patience to ‘hear what the material has to say to you,’ the openness to ‘let it come to you.’ Above all, one must have a ‘feeling for the organism'” (198). The time, the patience, the openness, a feeling. Tuck this mantra away on a sticky note and you’d be surprised, as I have been, that it maps as research wisdom again and again, for me, in my own work, and for offering guidance and support to graduate students.

The way I remember it, A Feeling for the Organism first came up in CCR720: Interdisciplinary Influences on Composition and Rhetoric: The Making of Meaning, a class I took with Louise Phelps at Syracuse in Spring 2005. The class compiled with an endless, robust reading list, some of which was focused on “the making of meaning,” and much of which was peripheral, circulated in weekly optional sets of PDFs and in in-class discussions about cognitive psychology, distributed cognition, models of mind, comprehension, memory and forgetting, and more. I must have picked up Keller’s book and read it leafingly-flittingly. And then more recently, a couple of years ago, I picked it up again and read it more carefully after I heard the story that A.’s mom was at Cold Spring Harbor on the day McClintock, who was also working there, learned of the Nobel prize, about how they walked together to the building’s entrance that morning, congratulatory small talk, about how McClintock said it was occasion to have cupcakes at the cafeteria later in the day. “A Feeling for” has become more sticky, a more appealing premise, as I have aged into a career and with each successive research experience.

My picking up and extending “A Feeling for” is also meant to respond to what I have noticed at times an implicit argument that data analysis, data visualization, and big data fascination are appealing because they are, with the heave-ho of computing might, expeditious. Dromological determinism, we might call it, owing to Virilio. This attitude supposes that if you just feed enough interview transcripts or whatever into the software, it will do the “feeling for” part in a jiff and the researcher will have assertion-worthy baseline evidence upon which to build a dissertation, a book, a career, etc. This is akin to a party popper enthusiasm for generative AI, implying that you can dump the data in, wiggle your nose, and ta-da! To contrast this counterpart to “a feeling for” would amount to “a shortcut for,” and its byproduct is more of the mythology that your life will improve because of all of the time you have gained back.

Not everything has held on much less held together through the collaging. For instance, I spent some time looking at the Nobel Prize website and at the photo gallery, McClintock’s prize lecture, and the short banquet speech. The banquet speech is especially badass for McClintock’s suggestion that being so long ignored might be construed by some as painful and disappointing, it was, for her, rewarding to be left alone with her work and to have so much time to get to know (and name) each corn plant. She said,

“Subsequently, several maize geneticists did recognize and explore the nature of this phenomenon, and they must have felt the same exclusions. New techniques made it possible to realize that the phenomenon was universal, but this was many years later. In the interim I was not invited to give lectures or seminars, except on rare occasions, or to serve on committees or panels, or to perform other scientists’ duties. Instead of causing personal difficulties, this long interval proved to be a delight. It allowed complete freedom to continue investigations without interruption, and for the pure joy they provided.”

Following this framing gesture, which amounts to a few minutes on a book recommendation underscored with why “A Feeling for,” I plan to say a little bit about immersing with the data, which for me in the context of Network Sense and before that the dissertation was stacks and stacks of CCC PDFs, followed by the importance of making visuals, being invested in the imagetext problem, and learning from the dataviz examples modeled by others. Next, a few remarks on CCC Online Archive, on those early graphs, on fretting much later about extending the dataset from 20 to 25 years, and then on word watching and turn-spotting, which will segue to the applied part of the session, where everyone will in effect make a simple cluster map of keywords in their research, then attempt to resolve which of the terms are rising, falling, or flat, and which corpora would be appropriate for corroborating the guesses.

Dam Road – Then What Happened

/ Derek Mueller

Napjerks between naps, this sabbatical is some but not all resting pose. A privilege and a luxury of course, I’m profoundly grateful!, the sabbatical is the first for me since winter 2016, a decade ago. This time is clockfaced with transition and red-inked bleedingly with fascistic bombardments on all sides of the U.S. news. Moving is manageable and not felt to be a remarkable upheaval, at least not yet, midwinter, but awful, abhorrent stuff, the latter. I write each day, finding or losing rhythm, but sitting and making words into lines, usually in the mornings. January was a blur and has passed. Groundhog saw its shadow today so who can say how long February will last.

I’m in Chapter Four (of Five), plugging away, thirty-seven ephemeralist episodes drafted and four to go. I left the more personal set for last, mistakenly imagining them to be clearer to me. They haven’t been. It’s merely drafting, which must come with small doses of self forgiveness. I draw in the evenings. Twenty-six drawings so far. Twenty-four to go. Soft goals are ~50k words and 50 original illustrations. Earlier today a few words on hand entanglement, carrot peeling, and continuous soups reached 400-some words; enough for now. But it pulled me down the mirror hall of half-memories of Tillie and Fred’s (my grandparents’) house in West Branch, which real estate websites pin to a lazy timeline as being built in 1900 along Dam Road, a couple of miles out of town, dirt road. I guess they were only there until I was 9 or 10, since by that time Fred had died (in August 1979) and Tillie had moved to the apartment, Winchester Towers. Tillie died in September (maybe August?) 1984. I don’t remember ever going back to Dam Road after Tillie died, after her funeral, only that the division of assets was fraught, adults fighting. You’d best go outside and play, which of course I did.

Figure 1. Tillie and Fred’s (my grandparents’) house, Ogemaw County, Mich.

A few different real estate websites host undated photos of the place, though I guess most of the photos are from the last 15 years. I recognize a few things. The brick planter box next to the front door. The sliding glass door leading into the kitchen. I know the floor plan well, the smaller bedrooms, the utility room at the back, the kitchen. I wonder what remains of the early 1980s features in the yard, the trees, or the rhubarb patch. I only remember climbing the one weeping willow and white pine near the road. The willow was always being climbed by older cousins; it felt more dangerous because big kids were waiting in line or had already climbed ahead of you, all of the right setups for being shoved out of the best perching places. The pine by contrast was not in demand because every branch was covered in sap blisters. Had to be careful not to let clothing touch the sap because it was impossible to wash out. None of this is in the book manuscript other than a passing mention of the willow and the pine.

I read again over the weekend in Caitlin DeSilvey’s Curated Decay and have been thinking appreciatively about how she framed her methods for writing about a sea and storm wracked pier. Many histories are keyed to events, and keying to events spotlights the constitutive and the formidable, leaning toward progress, rebuilding from loss, and repair. Given this, how might one write from the obverse, the inevitabilities of decline and recession? How, in this, can we carry out an ephemeralist practice observant of gone-going yet not presumed to be sparring with, or against the Modernist grain of a more commonplace historiography stitched from this-then-this-then-this eventfulness? DeSilvey described storying in service of analysis, but the vignettes accept and humbly call attention to their assured incompleteness, their unfinishability. Nothing turns out. We don’t know what happened next because next hasn’t happened yet. It follows, then, that one approach to decay curation unfolds through incomplete stories, making method through scraps and fragments whose accumulation cannot add up to a complete picture but instead accepts slivering, impermanence, and loss. Ends never-ending. The epigrammatic. Vignettes ending in ellipses, em-dashes, question marks. Writer and reader shrugging in tandem, so, what then? Is that it? I want my money time back. Why didn’t anyone bother with a new roof? We used to eat whole stalks dredged in white sugar, so who exactly abandoned the rhubarb patch to overgrowth and rewilding? What fungus is growing from the split portion of the willow chipped and scattered a couple of inches deep along the fence line? Then what happened.

Myscot Wheel (Update)

/ Derek Mueller

X-posted from the socials, a note about a job change:

Figure 1. Updated myscot wheel1Otto the Orange is at the twelve o’clock position in the first myscot wheel mock-up I created (and posted to Flickr), which implicitly clocks the genre to 2004, the move from Kansas City to Syracuse and matriculating in CCR. I am seeing EWM entries about myscot wheels made in 2006 and 2009., or the institutions whose halls I have travelled.

This morning I updated the many-years-forged and still turning myscot wheel, whose every stop along the way has been powerfully rewarding2By “rewarding” I mean rich with realizations, commiserations, and learning. Louise Phelps emphasized to me, as I was nearing graduation from Syracuse, that every faculty position, no matter how high-gauged or low-gauged the system, could serve as a poignant teacher if we simply choose to look at it that way. and whose zenith position now reflects my most recent—and hopefully last ever—job change. Today is as apt as any to share the news with you all, since it is my first day as faculty at the University of Michigan. I will be on research leave/duty off campus through June 30 and begin a term as Director of the Sweetland Center for Writing in July. Goes without saying and also WITH saying that I am profoundly grateful to everyone who made this possible—you and you and you, friends and colleagues and students, encouragers, urgers of patience during patches of uncertainty in the long run-up, confidential external reviewers, and more. I hesitated to social-mediate the news but nonetheless wanted friends and family whom I haven’t told yet to know; plus, Is., who is in her first year in Ann Arbor (after transferring to U-M), thriving and loving it, nudged me over the holidays to share it, homecoming that it is, and here goes, an old taking the advice of a young, as they sometimes should. 💛💙〽️ #myscotwheel #jobchange #update #goblue

Notes

  • 1
    Otto the Orange is at the twelve o’clock position in the first myscot wheel mock-up I created (and posted to Flickr), which implicitly clocks the genre to 2004, the move from Kansas City to Syracuse and matriculating in CCR. I am seeing EWM entries about myscot wheels made in 2006 and 2009.
  • 2
    By “rewarding” I mean rich with realizations, commiserations, and learning. Louise Phelps emphasized to me, as I was nearing graduation from Syracuse, that every faculty position, no matter how high-gauged or low-gauged the system, could serve as a poignant teacher if we simply choose to look at it that way.

If I’m Butter

/ Derek Mueller

Cube-like Boxing Day, may the sides square to proper corners, may the glues adhere, may the receipts please the clerks and bureaucrats, may fibrous corrugations bear out an enduring physics and corresponding strength. SW Michigan Detroit Metro drizzle comedownance, or “sleet” on one of the free weather apps, and atmosphere holding on at the edge of slippery road surfaces, only of concern because I have to ‘get to’ go out in it to shuttle T. from Livonia to Ypsi around 3 p.m. ET. From here where I sit warmly in the morning, I envision the afternoon route as being traveled slowly-safely, though it is always the other drivers who no matter how much you imagine their skillful attentiveness may careen at any moment like Gen Zers checking phones for notifications, knees on the steering wheel at 4 and 7, low tread tires which also happen to be under-inflated, hydroplaning’s slick thrills, no faults to give in a no-fault state. Ford engineers do not do much for me, but to their credit they do make the default settings easy and automatic. I will drive with my lights on.

As I drive slowly later, over and back, or across and around, according to conditions, I will continue to listen to the audiobook I enjoyed enough to savor intervals of sublimity in West Virginia and Ohio as I drove north on Tuesday. Or I will listen to Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife,” which I was surprised to learn early in December was my most listened-to track in 2025, probably because it was on a loop that one day when I was at the back of the holler piling the last downed branches upon Stick Henge. When? I think June. Because I was out of signal range, the track wouldn’t advance, so I let it loop for oh I’d guess 90 minutes or so. Long listen the glitch.

As I drive slowly later, and as I listen to whatever, I won’t think about the Detroit Lions’ disappointing 2025 season. Won’t think about how I know I should unpack a collared shirt I brought to wear for a Tuesday evening New Year’s Eve Eve dinner. Won’t think about the clumsily worded email I received from VT’s IT division overnight, 2 a.m. on the 25th, about how my vt.edu email address would be terminated and all associated data storage expunged between one and thirty days from now and to contact 4Help if I need any assistance with getting everything saved, moved over, preserved, etc. Server farm can’t be bothered to wordsmith. I felt relieved, call it a Christmas miracle, that I had done well to predict the impersonal notification, to move everything, to set up forwarding, to delete OneDrive contents, Google Drive contents, to empty trash, to download Canvas materials, to empty my office, to turn in the institutionally issued computer. Everything listed on the autogenerated email, I had already done. Weeks ago. Prescient we are digital time travelers, and I was visiting December 25 in October. Lo and behold it is wondrous how many of tomorrow’s emergency headaches are forestalled by deleting early and often. No biggie if a little bit of memory spills and leaks, but that was always in motion and already assured.

In addition to that overnight work email, one of the gifts I received yesterday from my daughter, Is., was Amphigorey, a super-book collection of fifteen Edward Gorey books into a single volume. Uncomfortably, peculiarly delightful are The Gashlycrumb Tinies, of course, but The Listening Attic in limerick-illustration pairs has also piqued intrigue. They are bawdy, violent, awful in moments, yet they also, therefore, blossom indecorous and rare in today’s media environment, as if certain identifiable genres are endangered, out of fashion, almost gone. And so, a Boxing Day limerick inspired by the Gorey collection.

Boxing Day eff! as rainfreeze blew sidesies
Remote start boo-bloop do your thing please?
Over roads he then drove
GPS Livonia arrove
Whining Pig cringed cried wincing oh-why-me’s.

Twelve Twelve Gong Song

/ Derek Mueller

Tuned in a minor key so high it is audible only to the canine, I am partial to doubled numbers, especially on the calendar: five-five, my birthday; twelve-twelve, my mom’s birthday. And though she died out of the blue nearly three decades ago, we can all remember cake. A 1948-borne, she would have been seventy-seven yesterday. 🧁

Oh, would-have-beens, would-have-beens, pointed and darting and privately felt felt! The day, otherwise, was plenty full. The end of the last last week of classes for me at VT. A.’s dad visiting from Minnesota and so a morning of conversation on political idiocracy, AI, higher ed’s shambling, and more. Later in the afternoon and evening, two department holiday parties parties in Blacksburg, first a SOPA and SOVA joint gathering at Maroon Door for A.’s people, then an English Department event at Hahn Horticulture Garden, mountains of spinach artichoke dip and drinks, good cheer, spirited littles darting about, the mood of soft goodbyes, heartfelt and moving. Summa this group so generous to me; damn sure going to miss their everyday good humor, sincerity, and smarts. A few delivered toasts unforgettably nuanced, such that I, verklempt and feeling deep-down known and appreciated, could only witness in wonder the Hokiechromatic spectrum of feeling that reaches past tearfulness to esophageal flex, upper chest warming, and not to blame the poets, we do not in the English language even after all this time have nearly enough words for love love.

Figure 1. Wrapped wind gong.

I carried in a humble gift, wrapped in non-symbolic garbage bags, the best I could do, I apologize, I could have added a bow at least: this wind gong. Strike it well, I said; it is meant to be big enough to alter through waveform resonance pockets of afflicted energy, to create clearings, to elicit a smile; it is meant to be small enough to carry along to meetings, to share, to circulate.

Figure 2. Unwrapped wind gong.

When you are in Shanks Hall, Blacksburg, Virginia, listen. Strike it. Listen again. Does the gong song end, or does it go on, despite infinitely, inevitably fading?

Figure 3. Wind gong dedication.

Out of time, today is plenty full, too, just one more jot on Feta, who without thinking about it I sometimes call Feta-feta. Feta came home from the shelter in late May 2024, vet-estimated to be a year and a half old, though guesswork is guesswork and close enough is good enough. The inexact agespan opens to calendrical invention such that we decided recently, double numbers being astronomically favored as they are, twelve-twelve capacitating valences of already observable meaning, to call it Feta’s birthday, too. She is three. Extra extra pets, a kong packed with peanut butter-laced carrots, a twinkle in her eye expressing that what she really wants most of all, as do we all, maybe next year?, is a VT-English-mirrored wind gong for here at home, as gong songs surround, call call back back to one another one another.

Figure 4. Feta-feta photographic parallax.