Spring Baseball

March: Spring comes early in North Carolina--or at least earlier than it does in Indiana, where snow once fell in May on the day Lisa and I graduated from Indiana University. With spring comes baseball, and yesterday I enjoyed a delicious taste of both down here at Pembroke. When I walked out of the classroom building, the sky was deep blue, the sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, and the temperature was in the 70s. It was the kind of day on which Cubs star Ernie Banks used to say, "Let's play two!" The UNC-Pembroke Braves were doing just that, and I arrived in time for the second half of the doubleheader. I caught about an hour of ball before leaving for dinner, but, as anyone who has watched it knows, a few innings of college baseball are worth a whole game of pro ball. In the four innings I watched, I saw a double play, a pickoff, an attempted double steal, a triple, and--my favorite moment in all of sports--a play at the plate. If that wasn't enough, the Braves' manager--whom I had seen recite "Casey at the Bat" earlier that day in a "Poetry & P.E." reading in the English department--had himself thrown out of the game.

NCAA Women's Basketball

March: Ten years ago, Lisa and I were students at Indiana University when the Hoosiers won the NCAA men's basketball championship. In 1993, we were living here in Chapel Hill when the University of North Carolina won the championship. The following year, while I was still in graduate school at Carolina and we were still living in Chapel Hill, Carolina's women's team won the NCAA women's basketball championship. Of course, it helps that we traveled from one basketball dynasty to another, but I still think the coincidence is eerie. Those of you who dabble in office pools may want to take a second look at UNC-Pembroke next year.

This year, of course, Dean Smith and his team are making another run at the championship. While we have been watching them and hoping, we have been paying even more attention to Sylvia Hatchell and her women's team, who played their first- and second-round games at Carmichael Auditorium in Chapel Hill. We went to those games and had so much fun that we followed the team down to Columbia, South Carolina, for the regional championships, where the Tar Heels lost to George Washington.

In that short span of a week, we became fans of college women's basketball for some of the same reasons we started watching college baseball. For a fraction of the cost and hassle of seeing a men's basketball or football game, we can enjoy an equal dose of competition, talent, and hoopla at a college women's basketball or men's baseball game. To see the women play in Chapel Hill, for example, we paid $10 and sat close enough to hear the coach and players shouting over the blare of the pep bands and the roar of the thousands of fans. Hatchell's team, led by Marion Jones and Tracy Reid, plays with amazing discipline and energy, especially on defense. Lisa especially likes the spirited play of Jessica Gaspar, who always puts on a show with her dazzling passes and her ability to play at maximum enthusiasm and toughness at all times. Then there is the hoopla, which alone is worth the price of admission. Our favorite spectacle is the Tar Heels' mascot, Rammy, who dances and struts up a storm throughout the game. The Heels' pep band and cheerleaders, all in Carolina blue, always put on a great show, as well. We also had a chance to witness the peculiar pep squads of Carolina's first opponent, Harvard. While the Harvard dancers performed well at halftime, the school's band was just plain weird. Wearing crimson blazers and dark ties, the musicians looked better outfitted for a debate than a basketball game. In fact, we had reason to believe that they actually were the debate or the glee club instead of a band because they kept gesturing and singing, their words inaudible below the din of the crowd. They looked like Up With People, tragically set down in the middle of a college sporting event.

In the most exciting of the three games--as well as one of the most exciting basketball games I have ever seen--the Tar Heels came back from a ten-point deficit against an excellent Michigan State team. Down three points with about five seconds to play, Carolina called a time-out and let all of us fans stand there and tingle for a minute or so. After putting the ball in play, the Heels quickly got the ball to expert outside shooter Chanelle Wright, who sank a three-point shot seconds before the buzzer. The Heels went on to pile up a huge lead in overtime and win the game easily. The loss to George Washington in Columbia, of course, was disappointing, particularly because the Heels did not play up to their potential, having lost the momentum of their win over Michigan State. The Carolina women won't take home a trophy this year, but they will remember that second game, just as Lisa and I will remember the look on Chanelle Wright's face after she made that three-pointer.

"Incunabula: The World of the Fifteenth Century"

March: A lover of books, I love the University of North Carolina's Wilson Library, which houses the school's special collections of books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. In addition to making these and other items available to researchers, the librarians and curators regularly place many of their items on display for the general public to enjoy. At home from UNC-Pembroke, which is on spring break this week, I wandered into Wilson and discovered "Incunabula: The World of the Fifteenth Century," an exhibit featuring a few dozen samples from the library's collection of early books. Incunabula, a Latin word meaning "swaddling clothes," are books published before 1500. Because they come from the first half-century of publishing history, incunabula have a great deal of historical value. For example, I saw materials published by the most important of the early publishers, including Johann Gutenberg, William Caxton, and Aldus Manutius; examples of the early Gothic and Roman fonts, including the Bembo Roman one designed by Nicolaus Jensen for Manutius; and important early books, such as The Nuremberg Chronicle and Manutius's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, known for its woodcuts and printing. Signs accompanying the books explained several of their distinctive features. Most of the incunabula, for example, begin with an "incipit," an introduction that reads something like "Here begins ('Incipit') the work of Ovid . . . ." The last page usually contains the "colophon," where the name of the publisher and the publication date often appear, along with a prayer or some poetry.

Their historical interest aside, the incunabula on display here also are beautiful objects. The Nuremberg Chronicle, for example, contains some striking illustrations, including several done by the apprentice Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) before he became one of Germany's great artists. Many of the other books contain "rubrication," elaborate ornamentation that artists added in the margins of already printed pages and in spaces left for initial letters.

Whew!

May: Since moving to Laurinburg, we have spent quite a few of our daylight hours painting, decorating, cleaning, and otherwise fixing up our new home. After a month of working 12 or more hours a day this way, we had a dozen or so of our relatives, friends, and neighbors over for an open house on May 10. Finally, after all that excitement, we feel as if we can relax. In fact, we have been looking forward to this moment for the past five years, when Lisa was holding down a full-time job, I was studying in graduate school and working in as many as five part-time jobs at a time, and we were sharing the household chores. This spring was perhaps the busiest time of all. Lisa, living in Chapel Hill, worked full time at the University of North Carolina's Department of Nutrition, took over the household finances, and coordinated the purchase of our house in Laurinburg. I had moved into a dormitory at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where I was teaching four classes, finishing my dissertation, continuing to work for Carolina Leadership Development in Chapel Hill, and looking for a permanent, full-time job teaching. Before accepting a tenure-track position at Pembroke, I flew to job interviews in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Texas.

Now, Lisa has left her job in Chapel Hill to work at home as a homemaker and freelance publisher. I have no teaching assignments over the summer and go into my office only twice a week to work on research projects. As a result, we're enjoying a lot of free time in our new home. Our large backyard, which contains dozens of pines and other trees, is a miniature nature preserve, and we've been watching the birds who come to visit. The weather has been gorgeous--sunny skies, temperatures in the 70s and 80s--for the past two weeks, and we have taken the opportunity to spend many hours outdoors, walking or riding our bikes through our neighborhood, visiting the park, and lying in our hammock.

We miss our friends in Chapel Hill, but we're working on making some new ones here. We already have found a very good friend in Jamey Henderson, a Fort Bragg soldier who took one of my writing classes at Pembroke. Jamey is about our age, and, like many older adults in college, he is an outstanding student. He's also a great person who has helped us move and fix up our lawn. Since the open house, which he attended, we have cooked out with him and look forward to seeing him many times this summer.

Finally, we have had the chance to travel a little, as well. Last weekend, we drove up to Richmond, Virginia, to see Jefferson's Capitol and the Museum of the Confederacy, and then up to Baltimore, Maryland, where I chaired a session on Thomas Wolfe at the American Literature Association's national conference. Baltimore is an ideal city for us because I can visit some fascinating historical sites, Lisa can enjoy some extraordinary shops and restaurants, and we both can take in the beauty of the architecture, parks, and harbor.

Adventures in Laurinburg

June: Some people might feel trapped in a small town like Laurinburg, North Carolina. We feel right at home. A city of about 33,000 people, Laurinburg lacks many of the things we have seen in larger cities: noise, traffic, tiny yards, endless strip malls, and abandoned downtown districts. Instead, we've found a pleasant combination of peaceful, clean, tree-lined neighborhoods and small, but lively shopping districts. We especially enjoy living in an older, downtown neighborhood, where we can enjoy many of these features without even getting into our car. We walk five minutes to church, ride our bikes to the library or post office, and regularly run our errands downtown on foot.

If we had a large appetite for stimulation, we might miss the larger cities where we used to live. Living on the salaries of English majors for the past eight years, however, has helped to curb that appetite. Even when we lived in Indianapolis and Chapel Hill, a trip to Target or an evening with Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was usually more than enough to satisfy us. Laurinburg offers exactly the inexpensive, simple pleasures that we like best: a nearby park where we can walk, a ballpark where we can watch amateur baseball, an ice cream shop, safe neighborhoods where I can run and we can ride our bikes, an excellent Mexican restaurant called Mi Casita's, and an outstanding barbecue restaurant called General MacArthur's. We also are only a five-minute drive from St. Andrew's College, a Presbyterian school of about 400 students here in Laurinburg. Huge, densely wooded, and situated around a gorgeous pond, the St. Andrew's campus is a perfect place to walk, ride a bike, or just sit by the water and watch birds. It reminds us a lot of the St. Francis campus in Fort Wayne, except that it's about 10 times larger.

We also are only about five miles from South Carolina. We recently drove 40 minutes to the town of Cheraw, which is home to a large state park and a charming downtown district. Perhaps because it also contains a golf course, the park is not exactly teeming with wildlife. Except for 42 species of flies, we saw only a few animals: a squirrel, a bird or two, several lizards, some caterpillars, and a snake, which Lisa nearly trampled by mistake. After hiking for an hour in 90-degree heat, we didn't have the energy or desire to explore the lake, but we did spend a few minutes in downtown Cheraw, where we saw the home of the Cheraw Lyceum, a tiny building where people began congregating in 1856 for lectures. We look forward to returning to this town, perhaps when we have guests, to see more of the park and the historic sites.
 
 

Our Friend Flicker

June: On my way into Laurinburg from Pembroke, I pass a sign advertising Laurinburg as a "bird sanctuary." Our yard, which is packed with tall trees and several shrubs, must be one of the city's main draws for birds. Soon after moving here, we started spotting cardinals, blue jays, doves, mockingbirds, and robins. But that was only the beginning. These sightings whetted our appetite for birdwatching, and we started looking through our binoculars and consulting our birdwatching guide. Quickly becoming conversant with terms such as "cap" and "bib," we have had a ball identifying gray catbirds, thrashers, nuthatches, and a woodpecker called a yellow-shafted common flicker. My favorite is the gray catbird, which has a funny black cap and makes a sound like a cat's meow.

Mark Murphy Visits

June: We love to entertain guests, especially now that we have moved to a new town. We recently got a special treat when Mark Murphy, one of my close friends at Lawrence North High School and the best man in our wedding, stopped to visit us for a few days on his way to a wedding in Greenville, South Carolina. Soon after he arrived on Thursday afternoon, Lisa and I took him out to our favorite restaurant in Laurinburg, a barbecue smorgasbord called General MacArthur's. Over pulled pig and hush puppies, Mark told us about his new job as a financial analyst at Exxon in Dallas, Texas. The next morning, Lisa treated us to one of her legendary breakfasts, and I took Mark to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke campus, where I showed him my office and this Web site. After a pleasant afternoon of relaxation and conversation, we cooked some hamburgers and shishkabobs on our miniature grill and just enjoyed a beautiful, quiet evening in the back yard. Finally, we watched an excellent movie, The Usual Suspects, that our friend Mark Gamble had recommended.

Like most of our guests, Mark loved North Carolina. After seeing Laurinburg and spending some time in our home and yard, he even said he might like to relocate here some day. We'd like that.

Independence Day

July: Because of our interest in American literature, culture, and history, the Fourth of July is one of our favorite holidays. This year, we didn't feel like traveling, as we did a few years ago for a wonderful vacation in Colonial Williamsburg. Instead, we enjoyed a fun, traditional holiday at home featuring as many American things as we could pack into one day. For one thing, we flew our Stars and Stripes and played a lot of American music, including tunes from colonial Virginia and the Civil War era, Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs," and a tape of songs performed by the 82nd Airborne Division All American Chorus--courtesy of our friend Capt. Drew Reeder. For dinner, Lisa prepared a picnic meal of hot dogs, corn on the cob, pasta salad, watermelon, and chocolate pie. Even the weather was distinctively American for a Fourth of July: sunny and 90-something degrees. Never one to let a little heat slow me down, I went for a long, leisurely bike ride in the country and through the neighborhoods. I was eager to see how other Laurinburg residents were enjoying their Independence Day. Most, it seemed, were celebrating it inside in the air-conditioning, perhaps looking with amusement on the fool riding his bike around in the heat.

All we needed to round out our Fourth of July were a fireworks show and a baseball game. The nearest fireworks show, however, was a half-hour away, and we failed to find any ballgames on the local diamonds in Laurinburg. We settled for a drive in the country and an evening at home, where we have been spending our evenings reading to each other. For this occasion, we read the Declaration of Independence and part of a biography of one of my favorite Americans, Benjamin Franklin.

Memories of a Gremlin

Summer: All of you who knew me in high school know that I drove a Gremlin back then. Some of you may even remember the typing table my dad rigged up to hold the driver's seat in place after a drunk rammed the car from behind. For others, the dominant image is that of the dual CB antennae that made the machine so closely resemble its namesake. I suppose if I had had a choice, I might have traded the thing in for a Corvette convertible, a Camaro, or simply anything outside the AMC line, but I would have lost a lot in the bargain, particularly all the character that car built in me and all the mirth it brought my friends.

As I was leaving work at Chick-fil-A one night back then, one of my co-workers asked why I parked so far away in the parking lot. I don't remember if I responded, but another co-worker suddenly spoke up, explaining that my Gremlin was a powerful sports car and that I was trying to protect it from damage. I remember being amazed that the first person bought the story. She was rather gullible, but I would have thought she would see through this one. Maybe it was the racing stripe--yes, it really did have a racing stripe--that convinced her.

Then again, maybe both of those people knew something I didn't. Last week, a decade after I last revved up the Grem's engine, I saw a different Gremlin riding nobly on a trailer designed for race cars. It, too, had a racing stripe, and the gentle pink and white exterior gave it a decidedly Caribbean appearance. A source of pride for Gremlin owners everywhere, it would have made even Roger Penske turn his head. I didn't ask the driver of the car pulling it where it was headed, but I'm certain that somewhere it is roaring around dangerous ovals, enchanting fans delirious with excitement, going bumper to bumper with Pacers and Hornets, and, once in a while, taking the checkered flag.

Indiana Comes to Carolina

September: We love North Carolina, but we miss Indiana from time to time, especially Bloomington and our alma mater, Indiana University. In our whirlwind tour of the Hoosier State last month, we didn't get to IU to get our dose of the Indiana Memorial Union, the beautiful campus, downtown, and our favorite restaurants. Even though we didn't go to IU, however, IU came to us this year when the Hoosier football team came to Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill to play the Carolina Tar Heels. One of my college buddies, Pete Amstutz, got some tickets, and Lisa and I joined him and his girlfriend, Bridget Fitzpatrick, for the game. Because Pete bought the tickets from IU, we sat in the Indiana section, where the panorama of red and white and the general Hoosier hoopla made me feel a little nostalgic. More passionate about the school and the campus than its sports, I was happy to wear my Indiana ballcap and experience this nostalgia, but I didn't feel especially torn over the question of whether to root for the Hoosiers or my more recent alma mater, Carolina. In fact, I suspect Lisa and I confused some of our neighbors by politely cheering for both teams. We were happy that both teams played well and--we admit it--happy that Carolina won, 23-6. With a little luck, maybe we will see another battle of the alma maters in March on a wooden floor.

Smile!

Fall: Flipping through a new batch of photographs we had just gotten developed, we came across one that we didn't remember taking. We stood there and puzzled over for a moment, and then Lisa solved the mystery: the picture had been taken at the factory where the disposable camera had been manufactured. In the foreground is a row of other cameras, and behind them are two workers. The queerest part is that someone apparently deliberately took the picture because the flash obviously has been used. Was an assembly line worker feeling playful during breaktime? Was a journalist documenting sweat-shop conditions in the factory? Were the mice from molding on vacation in the soldering wing? You decide.

A Classic Fall Weekend

October: The past week in North Carolina has been an advertisement for fall, and Lisa and I have been the actors. Leaves are turning red and yellow under cloudless blue skies, and soothing breezes occasionally send them drifting down to the ground. When we came out to rake them this weekend, we found several of our neighbors also enjoying the beautiful weather, and we stood out in our yard visiting with them. On Saturday afternoon, we joined a few thousand other people at the John Blue Cotton Festival, Laurinburg's biggest event of the year. Named after a cotton farmer and inventor who lived in Laurinburg around 1900, the festival is like a county fair, where we got a taste of North Carolina barbecue and homemade strawberry ice cream, as well as a look at some beautiful quilts and the grand John Blue house, a two-story farmhouse built in the 1890s. At home, Lisa made me an apple pie in honor of fall. Finally, no autumn would be complete for us without the baseball playoffs and World Series, and we have been watching the games faithfully.
 

Poet Robert Morgan speaks at Pembroke

October: A couple of my colleagues in the Communicative Arts Department at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke work hard to bring a distinguished writer to campus every semester to read and discuss their work. This fall, the North Carolina native Robert Morgan, who teaches writing at Cornell University, came to the campus and read some of his poetry and fiction for a full house of about 100 students and teachers. Although I had not read much of Morgan's work, he quickly won me over, particularly when he read two striking passages from a novel called The Truest Pleasure, which he explained was inspired by the lives of his grandparents, one of them a Baptist and the other a Pentecostal. Moved by his vivid description of his grandmother's spiritual experience, particularly by his use of detailed imagery, I asked him later whether he had such an experience himself or had interviewed people who had. He responded that he relies on his own imagination. Indeed, he compared writing to acting and explained that he projects himself into a character to determine what he or she will do. With this remark and others he made during his talk, Morgan showed an absorbing interest in his own craft, as well as an extraordinary ability to talk about it articulately. I enjoyed hearing him talk about writing as much as I liked hearing the writing itself.

Am I That Old?

Fall: To help my students improve their sentence variety, I ask them to revise the following well-known sentences by changing the words or the syntax: After I wrote the sentences on the board, I heard a student ask, "What's Jude?"

I guess it could have been worse. She might have asked, "What's God?"

Thanksgiving

November: Ever since we moved to North Carolina, we've had to forgo spending Thanksgiving with our families in Indiana. The last couple of years, our surrogate family--Sandy and Michael Roberts--were kind enough to invite us to their home in Chapel Hill for Thanksgiving. This year, we were happy to extend the same welcome to our friend Jamey Henderson, a former student of mine and Fort Bragg soldier who was unable to return home to see his family in Kentucky for the holiday. Jamey has become a good friend of ours, and we always enjoy seeing him. Besides, Lisa loves to cook for guests, and we both were eager to show off our latest remodeling jobs. After an appetizer of Armenian flatbread, cambozola cheese, roasted garlic, and tomato chutney, the three of us sat down to a more traditional dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, cornbread stuffing, yeast rolls, and pumpkin pie. We spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening talking about the baby Lisa and I are expecting, Jamey's upcoming work in San Antonio, Texas, and other matters. Of course, we also gave thanks for each other, our baby, and all of the other wonderful things in the world.
 

New Year's Eve

December: With a baby on the way, I suppose we should be sowing our wild oats tonight, but we wouldn't know where to find the seeds. Not exactly night owls when we came to Laurinburg, we have managed to grow even calmer. I've heard people say that they're turning into their parents. I think we're turning into our neighbors, who range in age from about 80 to 93. Tonight, as thousands pour into Times Square, we've been organizing Lisa's sewing supplies and listening to "The Big Bands Are Back" on the radio. I used to laugh when Lisa told me that her family celebrates the arrival of the New Year by banging some pots and pans at midnight. Now, I usually can't even stay awake that long. Besides, we wouldn't want to wake the neighbors.
 
© Mark and Lisa Canada, 1999
canada@sassette.uncp.edu