Do you require getting out in nature when it comes to maintaining your sanity and soul? I certainly do. In fact, one of my struggles living in Fostoria was the relative lack of that exposure, even though the small city was surrounded by some very productive farmland. I wanted something a little wilder and freer.

Here are ten perspectives:

1. “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” — Alice Walker
2. “I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” — John Burroughs
3. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu
4. “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” — Aristotle
6. “Nature is the art of God.” — Dante Alighieri
7. “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” — Rachel Carson
8. “If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.” — Alex Trebek
9. “Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” — Gary Snyder
10. “You are a guest of nature — behave.” — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

1. Poets who expect to read as soon as they arrive and then depart when they’re done.
2. Those who have not revised their work.
3. Those who hold the stand too long.
4. People who don’t laugh at my funniest lines.
5. Readers who arrive when I’ve just ended.
6. Folks I’ve heard who won’t hear me.
7. Nights there’s no sharing, no worship of the muse. Too much competition.
8. Dishonesty. Pretense. Would-be actors.
9. Poets led astray by bad models. Wrong breathing. Lines that don’t fit the poet’s mouth.
10. Erroneous observations, fallacious reasoning. The facts must be correct.

You could add listeners who try to categorize each reader. or overly critical folks like me.

He got his name from signs I saw all over campus. NO SMOKING. Just move the space and it became Nosmo King. He was a solidly black cat with Siamese lines and smarts. As I noted when he was a kitten:

1. He’s been here two weeks. Or is it three?
2. Gained a pound.
3. Approaching adolescence, he’s learning the ropes.
4. Out of control.
5. Banging the walls.
6. Losing his balls.
7. Jumping to the table top.
8. Forgetting to wipe behind.
9. Staying up all night.
10. Adding chaos to our lives, not that he cares.

Or “heh-ell,” as the dialect might say. It’s been a half-century now since I left Bloomington as a research associate, and a few years before, when I graduated.

Rather than rave about the graduate library or the celebrated rare-books temple or the music or business schools, let me take a different tack, as viewed from now.

1. We’re still in disbelief that the football team could have a winning season, much less be ranked in the nation’s top 25 teams. Basketball’s a different matter.
2. Considering the conservative nature of the state, it’s a bit shocking that the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is located on the campus. Its extensive archives and research initiatives are discreetly housed, though, in the ivy-covered former Women’s Residence Center – or was, back then.
3. Its collegiate gothic-style buildings are clad in locally quarried limestone. As are some more contemporary ones.
4. The stream that meanders through wooded parts of the campus is called the Jordan River, not as a Biblical reference but rather in honor of David Starr Jordan, the school’s first non-ordained minister to serve as president – he was a scientist who believed in Darwinian evolution and left Bloomington after six years to launch Stanford University in California.
5. Founded as a seminary in 1820, the school is one of the oldest public universities in America.
6. The alma mater, “Hail to Old IU,” was set to “Annie Lisle.” a Scottish melody, as was Cornell University’s, and perhaps brought to Bloomington from Ithaca, New York, by Cornell alumni Jordan.
7. A practical joke is spelled “boress” but pronounced a bit differently.
8. The dining hall service continues to suck, as I’m finding in online comments. It was a major factor in the upheavals in my novel, Daffodil Uprising.
9. On-campus parking is limited and expensive.
10. Nobody’s ever figured out what “Hoosier” means, as far as I can tell.