Not Buying New Clothes for a Year

My pledge to not buy any new clothes or new shoes for a year ended in early July. My wife and I had taken this pledge together.

It wasn’t difficult to go without buying clothes or shoes. My life doesn’t require many interactions with people since I work from home. Other people who see me may think that I am retired because I wear loose denim pants and a t-shirt in the summer whenever I shop for groceries or take a walk outside. Once a month or so, my wife and I venture a bit farther from home when we visit our son or see a movie; those are the few occasions when I wear what I used to think of as my teaching clothes—i.e., chino pants and a collared shirt. (My wife tends to think of men’s clothes as boring because there are so options and so few acceptable colors—navy blue, black, white, burgundy, dark green, red, etc.)

I had bought new shoes before our pledge took affect and because I anticipated not buying any other shoes for a year, I bought a second pair of the same style to have them in reserve. I am wearing that second pair now, but I am not ready to buy any more.

Because gifts didn’t count against the pledge that we took, my wife bought me a few pairs of boxer shorts for Father’s Day. Since our pledge ended, my wife bought a few things and insisted that I buy the equivalent amount. I have since returned the chino pants I ordered because their rise was too short. My sister teasingly says that I am at the age where it is acceptable to wear my pants up to my waist, which is what I have been doing since I gave up wearing Levi 501 jeans about ten years ago.

When I went through my closet and my drawers, I thought I might have found more clothes to give away. Piles of clothes, mostly old sweatshirts and old t-shirts, were taken to the local Goodwill. Sometimes, however, my wife would snag for herself the shirts that I wanted to donate. I ended up regretting giving away an old hoodie, one that I had gotten in Oklahoma about twenty-five years ago; it would have been great for working in the yard in the autumn or early spring. I recently revisited the Goodwill, thinking that I could buy back that old hoodie, even though a year had passed, but it apparently had been grabbed by someone else.

Sorting through my clothes led me to re-discover what I had forgotten about or what I had stored away because I gained weight. I never have been a believer in giving away what I hadn’t worn in over a year’s time. Having lost about ten or fifteen pounds on my vegetarian diet, it is now possible to wear some of the shirts that I had put aside.

It would have been a bigger challenge for me if I had pledged not to buy any books, used or new, or any music downloads for an entire year. That kind of pledge would make me turn to the books that I have bought over the years but have not yet read. That kind of pledge would make me visit the local library again or to request books through interlibrary loan at the college where I teach. With the seventy gigabytes of music that have downloaded onto my computer, either by ripping my CD’s or by purchasing mp3's, I probably could find something to discover in the music that I already own. Streaming music on Spotify, for example, isn’t a temptation for me. During the past few months, it has been relatively easy leaving Barnes & Noble without purchasing anything. Occasionally, I may take a picture of a book that looks interesting but that remains too expensive. During the past few months, I have been limiting the music that I buy, too. There are some new releases that I am looking forward to, such as Trygve Seim’s upcoming album on the ECM label, which will be released at the end of August. For the time being, I am satisfying myself with what I already own.

Minimalism remains an attractive idea. There is a limit to how much stuff I can fit into my life.

Sharing Music with my Students

At the end of every semester, I add a postscript and an addendum to my online writing classes. The postscript reminds the students what exactly the class has stressed and emphasizes the importance of continuing to write and to read regularly. I also make recommendations of fiction to read, such as Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang and James Welch's The Heartsong of Charging Elk. My recommendations for nonfiction include Edward Humes' Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, Elizabeth Royte's Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Kirsten Iversen's Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, and Charles Moore's Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans.

The addendum is somewhat more personal and contains about thirteen YouTube links to the kinds of music that I often listen to while I am grading their essays. This music includes things like Matthew Halsall’s "Together" and "Been Here Before," Soren Dahl Jeppesen’s "No Stars Without Darkness," Anouar Brahem’s "Stopover at Dijbouti," Sokratis Sinopoulos’ "Eight Winds," Tord Gustavsen’s "Where Breathing Starts," and John Surman’s "Winter Elegy."

My students have the option of responding to either the postscript and/or the addendum for a few extra credit points. One student, years ago, said that her father heard the music she was playing while he was passing by her room, came in, and wanted to hear all of the saxophone music. In that way, the music spoke to someone else. Another student said Jon Hassell’s music from his Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street album was interesting but mostly just weird. Some students aren’t ready for new experiences. More positively, a student who co-owns a gym in Lawrence said that the music is what he needs when he works out in the mornings. This semester, a student who listened to Skuli Sverrisson & Oskar Gudjonsson’s The Box Tree said that the music “sounds amazing.” That comment just warmed my heart.

Making this music available to my students is one thing that enlivens the end of the semester for me before I am overwhelmed with yet more essays to grade and only a few days to work through them before grades are due.

Identifying Modules in Canvas with Pictures

Most of my pictures as of late have been focused on my online class. Canvas, the learning management system that I am using now in my online classes, makes it possible to provide a picture for each module. The students only have to click on the picture to be directed to the appropriate module, which contains, for example, the instructions for that assignment. Because the grading is burdensome, I have been having a bit of fun choosing and creating pictures for the modules in my class. My department head has been getting the pictures that he uses from the Internet. I instead have been using pictures taken at various places or have been creating pictures at my desk. These pictures appear below.

My wife tells me that using Paint to add text to a picture is relatively easy. I played with the program but didn’t have any success with it. I instead found a website named BeFunky that makes adding text to a picture extremely easy.

Initially, my pictures described a writing assignment figuratively. I eventually decided to become more literal for some of the assignments. My students haven’t yet said which ones they prefer.

I see myself continuing to experiment with which pictures I select for my classes. At the moment, I am most pleased with Introductory Materials, Getting Started, Rhetorical Analysis, Informative Synthesis, and Postscript. Because my students this semester are mostly transfer students from either U of Kansas or Kansas State, I decided to include both institutions in the picture for the Argumentative Synthesis.

Entranced by the Blue Hour

Sometimes, after I have completed another night of grading essays for my writing classes this summer, I pull open the curtains or walk outside to water the plants before going to bed and find the early morning incredibly pretty for a number of reasons—the sun has not yet risen about the horizon, the air is at its coolest, and the birds are singing.

Only recently, after I downloaded the Exsate Golden Hour app, have I become more acquainted with both the blue hour and the golden hour, both of which appear once in the morning and once in the evening but usually for less than an hour each time.

I don’t remember finding as much enjoyment in the morning blue hour when I was younger and hurrying to work or when I was working the midnight shift and guarding KC-135’s on alert while I was stationed in Montana.

I am almost tempted to rearrange my internal clock so that I can wake up at something like 4:30 every morning. My circadian rhythm has been configured differently for so many years. I’m not sure that I can ever actually become a morning person. The idea, though, is appealing and something to consider.