9/30: two reminders
...of my father in the mail today: an article from the NYTimes (about Kathleen Ryan's fruit sculptures) that reminded my mother of him, and a note from one of his Fine Arts departmental colleagues (thanking me for a pamphlet I sent her). Of course he's never really far from mind, but these seemed like especially sweet ways to remember him.
9/29: catching up
...with Simon and Baz, the main characters in Rainbow Rowell's Carry On, which I read as a lark four years ago. A sequel just came out, and it was good company while I was in bed sick.
9/27: getting ready to sleep alone
Usually it's Chris, me, and two of the four cats sleeping in or on the bed, but I hardly slept yesterday night so Chris and the cats moved to the futon in my office for tonight so that I can get some rest.
9/27: round robin
In one of my classes today we finished our unit on Greek drama. I asked the students to write down three things that they were especially glad they encountered, explored, or did during our time together. Then I asked them to share one of those things with the group. Both their sharing and their written lists were so nice!
9/26: better
The vegan cookies I thought hadn't turned out so well last night seemed better this morning. I'll be taking them, plus two batches of other kinds I made this evening, to school tomorrow, and I hope the students will like them.
9/25: a variety
Feeling at ease with my beginning Latin class.
Having some good office hour meetings.
Writing to an alum with a question and hearing back from him almost immediately.
Drafting an email that I've been thinking about for almost a week.
Meeting with a friend to do some planning for a possible trip with students.
Making two different kinds of vegan cookies. (With mixed success, but it was still good to do.)
Receiving a note from a publisher of chapbooks and artist books who just received some of my pamphlets and had nice things to say about them.
Having some good office hour meetings.
Writing to an alum with a question and hearing back from him almost immediately.
Drafting an email that I've been thinking about for almost a week.
Meeting with a friend to do some planning for a possible trip with students.
Making two different kinds of vegan cookies. (With mixed success, but it was still good to do.)
Receiving a note from a publisher of chapbooks and artist books who just received some of my pamphlets and had nice things to say about them.
9/24: Hawthorne
In the 3rd-semester Latin class we try to give students a taste of the various kinds of activities that Classicists do. Today we did a little reception studies work, with the students looking at the conflation of Eve and Pandora in Hawthorne's Wonder Book. What goodness that book has brought into my life over the past decade!
9/23: class planning
I liked one of the activities I planned for (and did in) today's Latin class: generating a set of simple sentences that used the same basic vocabulary to illustrate all the syntactic phenomena we've covered so far.
I had a sweet lesson planned for my Ancient & Modern Drama course, but it involved watching a short video, and the speakers in the classroom didn't work. Ugh! But luckily I had over-prepared for class and so had some back-up questions we could pursue instead. Hopefully on Wednesday we'll get to watch and discuss the video.
I had a sweet lesson planned for my Ancient & Modern Drama course, but it involved watching a short video, and the speakers in the classroom didn't work. Ugh! But luckily I had over-prepared for class and so had some back-up questions we could pursue instead. Hopefully on Wednesday we'll get to watch and discuss the video.
9/22: down to the dock
...at sunset. I used to go almost every night, but I've fallen out of the habit. I didn't stay long, but I was glad to see the almost-autumn light on the water and smell the almost-autumn leaves on the air.
9/21: waking up
...to an email that said that my latest pamphlet was "really f---ing good." I'm not sure I've ever liked a use of the F word more!
9/20: a good end to the week
A great moment in class when the students' faces and exclamations registered how their view of Aristophanes' Lysistrata shifted upon considering that the original actors would all have been men.
Good office-hour meetings with students.
Time at Quiet Writing spent on my sabbatical proposal.
A wonderful dinner with a friend at a new-to-me restaurant to plan an ekphrastic project.
Some laps at the walking track, marveling at sentences while listening to Out of the Silent Planet. One passage included a reference to Polyphemus that made me smile a big smile.
A piece of chocolate cheesecake from a whole cheesecake given to me today as a gift.
Good office-hour meetings with students.
Time at Quiet Writing spent on my sabbatical proposal.
A wonderful dinner with a friend at a new-to-me restaurant to plan an ekphrastic project.
Some laps at the walking track, marveling at sentences while listening to Out of the Silent Planet. One passage included a reference to Polyphemus that made me smile a big smile.
A piece of chocolate cheesecake from a whole cheesecake given to me today as a gift.
9/19: Thursdays
For years now my Thursdays are lighter teaching-wise than the other days in the week, a breather for which I'm grateful. Thursdays often become my doctor-visit day or my catch-up day or (like today) my run-some-errands-in-the morning-before-work day.
9/18: Persians
It's been a long time (at least 15 years?) since I last taught Aeschylus' Persians. I liked how today's class conversation about it went, and I'm enjoying reading the students' analysis of specific passages they chose to focus on.
9/17: having time
...for a working dinner with a colleague and then grocery shopping before doing some grading at home. And although it was a full evening, it didn't feel overly packed and I didn't feel rushed to get through it all.
9/16: putting some pamphlets
...into the mail this morning. The formatting took some unexpected turns this weekend after I had thought I was all done with it, and today I was content with the outcome and happy to send some copies out into the world.
9/15: taking a few minutes
...to photograph this sheep figurine outside, just for fun. It had been awhile since I had taken pictures of one of my animals! I like the texture of the lichen compared with the texture of the sheep's "fleece."
9/14: rice pancakes
...for dinner. They are one of my favorite things to eat, and it had been too long since I had had them.
9/13: week's end
It was a work-week with some bumps in the road, but it ended smoothly. Two good class meetings, an office-hour session, nice student work on quizzes, quiet writing with colleagues, walking at the track while listening to Out of the Silent Planet, and then the harvest moon over the lake.
9/12: talking
...with students from my Latin class one-on-one. They've been coming in to do individual pronunciation practice, and I've enjoyed the chance to chat with them and get to know them better. They are nice people.
9/10: hearing
...myself say a phrase the way I've heard a friend say it, and then texting her to tell her. It made me feel like she was closer than 980 miles away.
9/9: a new pattern
I collect snippets of the patterns used on the insides of security envelopes, and Chris gave me one I didn't have.
9/8: the juxtaposition
...of Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis and Sophocles' Philoctetes. They are two plays I love and have often taught, but not so closely alongside one another. As I read and prepare to teach them back-to-back, I'm noticing lots of great comparisons and contrasts.
9/7: a good correspondence week
One great letter and two great emails from people who really "get" me. I am lucky to know them and am so grateful that they sent words and thoughts my way.
9/6: brainstorming
...prompts for ekphrastic writing. I meant to do business-related work during Quiet Writing, but then I really felt like I needed to do something more idea-full, and that was the right choice.
9/5: lunch
...with a friend! (And I'm packing a lot of gratitude and warmth and enthusiasm into that exclamation mark.)
9/4: violet, lilac
...magenta, pink, and peach. The shades across the sky as I watched the sunset through the windows at the walking track.
9/3: cantaloupe
...as part of breakfast and as part of lunch. A taste of summer, even as the school year gets underway.
9/2: ekphrasis
I've been listening to The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith and enjoying its ekphrastic passages about (fictional) paintings. Today I realized that, even when Smith is not being obviously ekphrastic, much of his narrative and descriptive technique in this novel yields the feel of ekphrasis.
9/1: choosing words
...for the front page of Heron Tree volume 6. I usually take one word from each poem in the collection, and this year's words are: ancestors, anvil, blackbird, bone, bowl, continent, dogwood, dusk, eyes, flint, fogs, grass, halves, laundry, loss, morsels, name, needle, number, paths, ravines, ribs, room, silt, surfaces, teeth, tongue, tunnel, veils, veins, waves.
I woke up with some sinus trouble and have been under the weather all day, so getting this done feels good. Word lists always seem to cheer me up--there's magic therein (and I should remember that so I can call on it when I need it!).
I woke up with some sinus trouble and have been under the weather all day, so getting this done feels good. Word lists always seem to cheer me up--there's magic therein (and I should remember that so I can call on it when I need it!).
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