On Gratitude and Sabbaticals

Picture it.  This morning driving to the library - a regular occurrence if uninterrupted internet is needed - I was looking up at the sky at an eagle soaring overhead and nearly smushed a wild turkey meandering across the road.  This image, my friends, is a profound life truth -although I am at a loss yet to put it into language.

But it seems an apt story for the first "official" day of my sabbatical year - even though I have been enjoying the concept since May.

Sabbatical or a sabbatical (from Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew shabbat, i.e., Sabbath, literally a "ceasing") is a rest from work, or a break, often lasting from two months to a year. The concept of sabbatical has a source in shmita, described several places in the Bible Leviticus 25 for example, where there is a commandment to desist from working the fields in the seventh year. In the strict sense, therefore, a sabbatical lasts a year.  (Wikipedia)

The idea of rest - other than a rest from the grinding down that a 15 week semester entails - is not really the focus of my sabbatical.  Nor should it be.  The idea is the bliss of uninterrupted work.

Paul Cronin begins his book, Werner Herzog:  A Guide for the Perplexed (conversations with Paul Cronin) with a quote from William Faulkner:

"An artist is a creature driven by demons.  He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."

The process Herzog describes is a familiar one, in terms of often being assaulted by ideas.

The problem isn’t coming up with ideas, it is how to contain the invasion. My ideas are like uninvited guests. They don’t knock on the door; they climb in through the windows like burglars who show up in the middle of the night and make a racket in the kitchen as they raid the fridge. 

I don’t sit and ponder which one I should deal with first. The one to be wrestled to the floor before all others is the one coming at me with the most vehemence. I have, over the years, developed methods to deal with the invaders as quickly and efficiently as possible, though the burglars never stop coming. You invite a handful of friends for dinner, but the door bursts open and a hundred people are pushing in. You might manage to get rid of them, but from around the corner another fifty appear almost immediately... Finishing a film is like having a great weight lifted from my shoulders. It’s relief, not necessarily happiness. But you relish dealing with these “burglars.” I am glad to be rid of them after making a film or writing a book. The ideas are uninvited guests, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome. 

It seems to me that I often use teaching as a way to push my ideas "out the door."  This is not always the best thing to do - and I have plenty of colleagues who manage to maintain their studio practice AND teach.  But that has always been difficult for me.  I love teaching - and students are always the most interesting people - I also love the institution I teach at, MIAD. This is my 20th year there.  (I guess I'm staying.)  So for me, a sabbatical year is a way to let all of those "uninvited guests" in from the journals and books and sketches they have been inhabiting, and deal with them.

At the present I'm sequestered on the edge of the Hiawatha National Forest very near to Les Cheneaux Islands.  Surrounded by fields of Queen Anne's Lace and fir trees I am working and working and reading and thinking and working.  It is incredibly wonderful.

              

Mossy Green

Deep in the Hiawatha National Forest there is the green of moss that covers the giant boulders or "magic rocks" as we sometimes call them.  It isn't the green of leaves or lichen or stems or any other green I can imagine.  It is the green of moss.

Although moss and lichens are both called non-vascular plants, only mosses are plants. Mosses are included in a group of non-vascular plants called bryophytes. Mosses are believed to be the ancestors of the plants we see today, like trees, flowers, and ferns. Lichens, on the other hand, are not similar in anyway to mosses or other members of the plant kingdom.   Although mosses are very primitive, they still have plant-like structures that look like and function like leaves, stems and roots. They have chloroplasts throughout their entire bodies and can photosynthesize from all sides of their structures. (via the US Forest Service)

Carpet of moss....bed of moss....mossy banks. It is the wonderful rich smell of the earth.  It is the GREEN that takes your breath away. 

Moss-Gathering, by Theodore Roethke

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, --
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had commited, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

Looking around on the internet I find all kinds of resources to help in this sudden rush of moss research.   Moss Plants and More  is an interesting blog being kept by JM Budke who writes; I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of California, Davis. My research focuses on moss plants.  This blog lists several other interesting sources including the IAB blog (International Association of Bryologists). The latest entry brings me right back to where I am - in the Upper Peninsula

June 18, 2013—

The International Association of Bryologists has awarded its Hattori Prize to Janice Glime, professor emerita of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for her online encyclopedia, “Bryophyte Ecology.”
The Hattori Prize recognizes the best paper or series of papers published by a member of the association within the previous two years.  Glime has completed two volumes on this group of diminutive plants that includes mosses, liverworts and hornworts:  “Physiological Ecology” and “Bryological Interaction.” A portion of the third (“Methods”) is available online, and she has at least two more volumes pending.
“Bryophyte Ecology” is read worldwide both as a text and reference. While scientifically rigorous, it is written in a conversational style. “I hope to make bryology more accessible to students who have no mentor in the field and to stimulate interest among ecologists, naturalists and educators,” Glime said. “A book such as this is dependent on scientists in many fields, all over the world.”

 And I also want to mention Moss Musings, just because it is such a kicky sounding name.  Written by certified moss freak Nancy W. Church, there hasn't been a post since last year (where are you Nancy??).  It does include an entry about moss myths though -

Moss Myths

I regret having to break it to those who are navigationally challenged, but moss does not grow only on the north side of a tree.  It is found there predominantly because that side is generally more shady (in the northern hemisphere, that is).

And, despite having names that include the word “moss,” plants such as Spanish Moss — an epiphyte, Reindeer Moss — a lichen, Club Moss — a lycophyte (seedless, vascular plant), Irish Moss — a perennial, and Sea Moss — an algae, are not mosses at all. Mildew, unlike moss, is parasitic and requires a host.

 Written on a cloudy afternoon at the St. Ignace Library.

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of California, Davis. My research focuses on mosses. - See more at: http://mossplants.fieldofscience.com/#sthash.i7urvsH8.dpuf

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of California, Davis. My research focuses on mosses. - See more at: http://mossplants.fieldofscience.com/#sthash.i7urvsH8.dpuf