Raise a glass, drink a toast, my academic career is officially over! Melissa and I are moving back to Madison. I love teaching at Howard, and I could stay here long-term. But we can't afford Maryland, can't, in fact, stand Maryland anymore, and we want to raise The Bean within easy spoiling distance of her various grandmas and aunties. We want to drink beer on the Terrace, polka at the Essen Haus, canoe on Lake Monona, and shovel our @#$%!!! car out of the @#$%!!! snowbank every @#$%!!! winter. We miss it.

So I've resigned from Howard, and we're going to put down roots in beautiful old Madison. We're looking at houses on the east side. Melissa has a line on a good job in her old field, and I plan to drive a taxi.

We'll be back in early June if any of you current Madisonians want to get a drink.

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash

 

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky;

Contrariwise, my blood runs cold

When little boys go by.

For little boys as little boys,

No special hate I carry,

But now and then they grow to men,

And when they do, they marry.

N

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When the comet killed the dinosaurs, it wiped out all traces of their intriguing clock radios, The first paleontologist to find one in a Triassic shale formation will be surprised, to say the least. The comet that killed the dinosaurs is swinging through the neighborhood again to see what's going down on the flaming waterball it left behind 65 million years ago. It has a bet going with Jupiter; what's the dominant lifeform now? Jupe says it's those funny little hamsters the Tyrannosaurs used to serve on toothpicks at gallery openings, but the comet is certain that now the kings of the hill are elephant-sized rotoviruses. What's this? the comet picks up, of all things, an FM television signal. "Desperate Housewives???" The transmission indicates that the planet is, in fact, dominated by the snarling, hideously rut-crazed females of one of the larger primate species. The males appear to be drones, drab-colored by comparison, routinely devoured after mating. The face of Marcia Cross appears, slathered with mineral unguents, lips drawn back in a snarl. The comet signals Jupiter: this place badly needs a bit of the old bolide whompin'. Impact in 5...4...3...

* * *

I don't know why I have such trouble on the job market. After all, I write my own recommendation letters; all glowing with praise, signed Professor J. Boggart Plimfeather of Pease College, Oxflap. I have an article forthcoming, with a secret acrostic hidden in it: down the side, the first letters of the sentences in the first paragraph spell "Wilamo[v]it[z] wass a flabulent rub[b]er Penguin." (By the time Classics Omnibus figures it out, it will be too late, they'll have to pulp the Spring edition or have their reputation tarnished.)

The Bean is teething already. I'm not sure why, but she seems to blame me for it. Every time she looks at me, she grabs her gums on the right side and wails, fixing me with an accusatory hurt expression. She likes "Red Dwarf" - it's a father-daughter thing, I give her a bottle of tobasco sauce and olive-brine, and we watch the great old seasons 1-6 (but not the dadblang lousy seasons 7-8 or that awful 'back to earth' thing.) Bugs bunny is strictly out, though, no interest, she rolls over and stuffs the blanket in her mouth.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

What the press corps wants to know is: does the President have a swivel chair, and does he swivel in
it? How often does he swivel? Is there swiveling going on during cabinet meetings? During
Greenwich Mean Time? During an oxygen bomb attack? What does the Vice President think of this?
Has he his own swivel chair? It wouldn't be fair if he didn't.

Recent activities:

revising the 15 page article down to 7 pages for "Classics Omnibus" (names of publications have been changed to protect the culpable). One of the referees on my article stated he wasn't convinced by the main portion of my thesis. having read his comments, I'm no longer convinced it makes sense either.

wishing this Yoonivursity was not so hostile to faculty - in particular, wishing they hadn't arbitrarily revoked my parking spot. Plus, will they ever fix the enormous wet hole in the ceiling, or will the damned thing collapse and bury us all?

woolgathering

adding too much milk to coffee

teaching The Bean to blow raspberries.

The Bean has a new trick: she can roll over on her stomach. This woulsn’t be a problem except a 21/2-month-old on her stomach has to be supervised, lest her head detach from her neck, or something. The baby books decree it, anyhow, and we must obey. Worse, she’s been working on this trick for a few weeks now with one object evidently in mind: to crawl. I keep trying to tell her, she’s three or four months early for crawling, or so say the baby books. And really, she can’t manage it yet. She gets her legs moving, raises her head, tries to push up with her arms…and thrashes about in one spot. This really pisses her off, and we end up with a red-faced hollering blob of Emmeline.

 

In other news, I’m revising an article for Classics Omnibus, to be published next year sometime, and risking my fool neck biking on DC streets.

The Bean kept us up all night for the third night in a row. Not fussy or crying, just raring to go. Now it's eleven in the morning, I am corpse-tired, and she's still bright eyed, lying on her back on the plastic-festooned baby laugh-n-learn floor mat, grunting at Bobo The Insane Singing Rubber Dog who's velcroed to one of the struts. Bobo is flashing his disco lights, rolling his horrible bulging eyes, and burbling "the itsy bitsy spider" in between snippets of Mozart and Handel. I am not sure what this desultory flogging of classical music is supposed to teach her -- that culture is something which comes out of the speakers in a vinyl dog's armpit?

in other news, I am giving up using the laptop for writing. My 1938 Corona Speedline manual typewriter is in the shop right now getting its sticky carriage return greased. it sounds crazy to regress like this, but the typewriter does not have access to the Internet, nor to music editing software, nor to photoshop. I have come to face the fact that although the laptop is a dazzling tour-de-force of technology, I cannot actually get any writing done on it.I've written several  dozen short stories and a novel all on a manual typewriter. I can type 55 words a minute on it. It needs no batteries. I can sit outside with it and not worry about the glare or about running out of juice. Melissa knows that when I'm using it I am not surfing the internet, and that I am actually accomplishing something.

Classes start in three weeks. I am not psychologically ready. I feel as though I have been kept in a gaily-colored Dreft-scented crypt for the last month. the daylight looks alien and sinister. weee hatesss the light, doan't we, my preciousssss!

My new daughter's ears are pointy. I shit you not. Really pointy. Three theories spring to mind: 1. Alien 2. Changeling 3.Satan's baby. If she's an alien, would this make her a Vulcan? Dispassionate logic doesn't seem to be her strong point. I try to reason with her, for example, that there's no need to shriek as her fifteenth meal of the day is only a minute away, but she screams bloody murder nonetheless. Perhaps she's a Romulan. I can see the stirrings of martial fortitude in her, I suppose. If she's a changeling from the world of Faerie, when would they have made the switch? When she was in the hospital nursery? But I thought better hospitals kept goats heads and sour milk lying around just so they could ward off the baby-stealing pixie hordes. As for the Satan theory, when she's hungry and really breaking windows, I can believe it.

it's 4:30 AM and I've just gotten her to sleep...and oops, she's howling again. oh well, in spite of being Lucifer's infernal protoplasmic spawn, she's mighty purty.

She's here! Emmeline Alice Schnozzberry Fryingpan Dormouse Von Piddlepot Lochinvar Amati was born on Sunday, 7 pounds 14 ounces, yelling and hollering and shaking her fist at the world.

we haven't slept much. I am pretty incoherent. She is great at making faces. She has long black hair, long lashes, and huge dark blue eyes. I'm still shellsocked. I'll be giving her the Iliad to translate later today, will announce the results.

Melissa and I spent last night at the hospital's education building pretending to wash and change a plastic baby doll that looked like Yoda. Everyone else was Very Serious about their "babies", while we were cracking jokes with ours and earning disapproving glares. We flunked Basic Baby Care and Safety. I thought I was doing well getting the bath ready, but Melissa  pointed out that I was holding the baby by one leg. Can't do that! Then she tried it, and set Baby Slug Face on top of a stack of magazines. Bad Melissa! Bad Mother! Apparently, babies not only have some shockingly bad personal habits, but are too dumb to get their faces out of a heap of smotherous towels.

I noticed that the black couples all chose black baby dolls, while the Asian couple chose an Asian one. White couples stuck to pale. Does it really matter for the two-hour span of a class on bottom-wiping? We got there late. Our baby was, I think, Inuit or Pacific Islander, the last of the selection. (That's what I get for having checked that box all these years on student loan paperwork.) The nurse in charge apologized. I said it was OK, but when I found the SOB who was the real father, I'd break his face.

Competent or not, our new large apartment has an entire room dedicated to brightly colored plastic things that light up and go "zoink!" when you bite them. Soon, young Emmeline Alice Peekskill Cadwallader Small Weetabix Bunbury Amati will be among the ranks of the breathing.

Welcome to life, Emmeline! It is short and fraught with disappointment, but there are telescopes to look through, languages to learn,  and the foibles of human greed to keep you amused. I will get your bath ready, and your stack of magazines.