...this year's Heron Tree poems (posted online individually throughout the year) into the collected volume 9 PDF (available here). When I began assembling the compilation yesterday, I discovered that our website had not been working recently due to some changes in the security certification process. This was not a happy discovery! I got the site glitch fixed, today Chris and I finished the PDF, and this evening I uploaded it--officially published under the wire in 2022.
12/30: posting
...a little essay I wrote months ago about Classics in Rainbow Rowell's Simon Snow trilogy. I just never got around to giving it a final proofreading and uploading it. It was nice to re-read it and realize that I think it is a sweet piece. And, of course, it is nice that it is now up at last.
12/29: receiving notice
...from the IRS that our 2021 tax paperwork has finally been processed, and--yes--when I checked, the refund had been electronically deposited in our savings account, along with a little interest on it that had accrued while it had been waiting its turn in the IRS's stack. Whew.
12/28: getting through
...a day of aches from yesterday's COVID booster. Not fun, but better that it happened on a day when Chris and I could take it easy instead of on a school day.
12/27: getting a booster
...of the bivalent COVID vaccine. I could have gotten it earlier, but the other rounds of the vaccine and boosters took me out of commission for about 36 hours each time, and that's something I couldn't afford during the semester or while writing my conference paper. So today was the earliest I could get it, and I'm ready to take it easy tomorrow if/as necessary!
12/26: completing things
I made the recording of my conference presentation and submitted it.
I wrote a letter of recommendation.
Chris and I finished reading Moominpappa at Sea out loud. This was the last of the Moomin novels for us, since we had started by reading the last one (back in 2015, blog entry here). The whole series is dazzling, and the high existential stakes (are there any other kind?) of this particular novel astound me. Reading the books aloud with Chris, sharing them in real time, has been an extra delight.
12/25: a quiet day
In the morning: playing with pamphlet possibilities, taking a walk, and texting some friends and family with holiday wishes.
In the afternoon: experimenting with a new microphone and pop filter so that I can record my conference talk, then going to the dock to watch the sunset.
In the evening: making a new salad (lettuce, green onions, mandarin oranges, oil, vinegar, thyme, dill, and tarragon, with a little sugar too), watching the last episodes of the Kleo series, doing some more experimenting with recording, reading Moomins out loud with Chris.
All day: being glad to spend the day with Chris and the cats.
12/24: assembling
...the cubist Christmas tree which we made by painting the sides of about 80 2-inch blocks silver, gold, and different shades of green. We started with the painting back in October, and it's nice for it to be done: the tree looks sweet, and now the big table in our main room, which had been given over to the project, can be used for other things again.
12/23: a little heat
...from a generator which Chris had providentially bought. Our house heat, hot water, and oven all run on electricity, so it wasn't a happy thing when the electricity went out before sunrise and stayed off through a day of temperatures in the single digits and teens. Thanks to the generator, we were able to have a space heater going in one room to take a bit of the chill out of the air until the electricity came back on after midnight.
12/19: making mochas
...with Chris mid-morning. (And remembering having mochas at airport Costas in the UK.)
12/18: starting
...to write my conference paper. I have to record and submit it by Friday, so it's good it's now underway.
12/16: neighborhoods
I cleaned up my neighborhood a little this morning by picking up trash while I walked.
I enjoyed time with my childhood neighborhood this evening by having a virtual game night with my mother and two old friends.
12/14: a walk just long enough
...to finish listening to Nettle and Bone. It was a work day, but I figured I could take a half-hour walk in the morning to enjoy a break in the rain and the last bit of the novel. I had downloaded it on a lark, and I'm so glad I did: it has really helped in this final bit of the semester.
12/13: wrapping up
...the Greek class by grading the final tests and pronunciation recordings. On the test I gave them a new-to-them passage from Apocalypse to translate (the one in which the angel gives the narrator a scroll to eat!), and it was wonderful to see how people who in August 2021 couldn't even recognize all the Greek letters can now read the language. So much has been difficult for me this semester, but doing Greek with this group of students has been a steady pleasure, and I am so grateful for their goodwill and good work.
12/12: expressing my disappointment
...to a colleague who didn't have my back after I've worked hard this semester to have theirs. The source of the disappointment has ended the semester on a crummy note, but I feel better having written an email with my perspective before turning in tonight. Maybe it will help me put it behind myself so I can move forward tomorrow.
12/11: a handful of good things
...listening to T. Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone while walking, doing some painting, and playing with Simon the Cat.
...enjoying cherry blossom soy sauce (elegant!).
...realizing that vermouth would be the perfect drink to have with dinner, and finding some in the back of our liquor cabinet.
...being glad that I tried an assignment in which each student wrote a letter to the rest of the class and responded to the letters written by 3 other people.
...making chocolate flaxseed muffins this evening so that I can have them for breakfast in the coming week.
12/9: getting a sticker
...from a student! I usually put stickers on the Beginning Latin students' homework. Today, when one student turned in their final exam, they had put a cat sticker on it for me! They wrote a note to say that it was my turn to get a sticker, and that was just wonderful.
12/8: being glad
...that I added some authentic ancient inscriptions to the end of the Beginning Latin exam so that the last things the students will translate in the course are "real" Latin.
12/7: letting myself
...do work that wasn't crucial but was good. During the Greek students' final, I read their threaded discussion about a graphic novel presentation of Apocalypse and wrote replies to their thoughts. It gave me a chance to spend some time with the graphic novel myself, as well, which I appreciated. And in the afternoon I met up with two students from my first-year course who wanted to bind some more copies of the class chapbook. We worked together for over an hour, and by the end they didn't need my guidance in assembling a book.
12/6: getting goodies
...at school, with our "free" food service money. We stocked up on bags of chips and protein bars.
...at the pharmacy, where we went for our flu shots this afternoon. They were celebrating the one-year anniversary of their opening, so they had free pens, pads, and sodas.
...in my inbox. A former student wrote me a very kind note.
12/5: holding
...our Angel Card Project postcard-writing event. About 80 cards got written by a modest gathering of faculty and students, and I had fun this evening choosing stamps that matched the cards. Tomorrow they go out in the mail!
12/4: listening
...to some presentations for an online conference this morning. I am very grateful for the move to online academic conferences (though, of course, I wish it hadn't needed a pandemic to get us to realize the economic, environmental, and inclusive benefits of the format).
12/3: finishing
...R. F. Kuang's Babel. I was worried that I would be dissatisfied with however she chose to end the book, but I wasn't.
12/2: noticing
...the camellias blooming on campus as I walked from the parking lot to my office building. This evening Chris asked if I had seen them, and I was glad that he had noticed them too.
12/1: showing a colleague
...the labyrinth on campus, and admiring with her the newly fallen--large!--sycamore leaves nearby.
11/30: success
...with an early-morning trip to Staples to get printing supplies that ran out during a big printing job last night. Hurray for Staples' website: last night when I ran into trouble, I was able to see that they had what I needed in stock, so I could nip in this morning and get it. One of the things was in storage rather than on the shelf, so if I had gone to the store without checking online first, I would have thought they didn't have it.
11/28: telling a friend
...about R. F. Kuang's Babel. She immediately understood why it would interest both me and her.
11/27: making a second
...birthday card for a friend. I made one earlier, but its colors ended up being less cheerful and celebratory than I thought they'd be. I'm glad I gave it another go: the new one's colors are a lift to the eyes (and hopefully spirit).
11/24: a big umbrella
...for walking in the rain. Chris got it out of his truck so I could use it. I didn't think I'd need its larger circumference, but I did. I'm grateful he thought of it: it made it possible for me to take my full-hour walk without getting too soaked.
11/23: going out
...on the lake in my kayak for the first time since August. I was nervous, unsure of the impact on my poor TFCC, so I took it easy.
11/22: quietly
...ending this short week of teaching. Because people were scattering for Thanksgiving, I gave the afternoon Greek class an asynchronous assignment. They had to post some thoughts about a graphic novel version of the Book of Revelation. I enjoyed beginning to read their comments as I proctored a make-up test for a student who had Covid earlier in the month. Another advantage of not convening as a class this afternoon was that the student and I could use that time for the make-up. I was grateful for the calm and silence as he worked on his test.
11/21: laughing
...about gerunds and their subjects in my office with a student. In an earlier session, I had told him that in formal English subjects of gerunds are put in the possessive form. In today's session, we were going over part of his paper in which I saw a gerund with a non-possessive subject, so I started to flag it. He immediately showed me his computer screen and said something like, "Look! I just changed that while waiting to talk with you!"
11/20: listening
...to R. F. Kuang's Babel on my walk, and reaching a part about the effects of studying etymology.
11/19: turning the day around
...after some hard thoughts this morning. But then I went grocering, trying to get it in before the pre-Thanksgiving shoppers this week, and that necessarily took me out of my head a bit. Back at home, Chris and I made vegetarian reubens for lunch, and I had a gin drink too. After lunch and some tea, I took a walk and talked with a friend who called. Chris and I made scallion pancakes for dinner, then we painted some blocks for our holiday tree project. I also worked on photos, played with the cats, and read some of a novel for pleasure. The sources of the hard thoughts aren't gone, but maybe it's good to put them in a context of many things, where they can't dominate.
11/17: company
...in the wee hours. I couldn't sleep last night. When Chris woke up around 3, he kept me company for a while, and then I managed to doze off for a couple of hours, my only sleep of the night.
11/16: doing
...my Daphne presentation this afternoon. Of course I'm feeling over-exposed afterwards and like I didn't do as well as I would have wanted. But overall I'm glad I did it. Though it meant extra work during an already packed semester, prepping for it and then doing it gave me an excuse to think some new thoughts and hear ideas from other people outside a classroom context.
11/15: good Apocalypse talk
...with my Greek students today. We compared the way of it to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and then considered how the distinctive features of Apocalypse make sense for its particular program.
11/14: trading treats
...with my colleague and friend at school: my chocolate cookies with the Fiori di Sicilia flavoring for her Salvadorean cheese bread.
11/13: photographing
...the colorful tulip poplar leaves that I had collected at work earlier in the week.
11/12: a collection of quiet good things
Catching up on grading.
Enjoying the Daphne-related poems that I'll be talking about later this week (and feeling lucky that I came across each one).
Reading for pleasure.
Receiving personal snail-mail from multiple people.
Making vegetarian "chicken" soup with spaetzle.
Making chocolate cookies flavored with cinnamon, cardamom, and Fiori di Sicilia.
Talking with no one but Chris and the cats.
11/11: writing a calm email
...about an academic integrity issue. I was glad that I did it before calling it a night, and I'm glad that my email was short, clear, and not angry.
11/10: being amazed
...by the coloring on some fallen leaves from a tulip poplar tree on campus. I collected a handful of them and brought the bouquet back to my office.
11/9: erasing
...a passage from Aeschylus' Persians this morning. I needed to do it as an example for the students, so it was "work," but it was also pleasure.
11/8: talking about Apocalypse
...with my Greek students and how some of its language works in a literary way.
11/7: being lucky
...that today was a day when I only had to sit in the audience of my co-taught freshman class. My friend was teaching today because I had taught on Friday, and all I had to do today was take note of who participated. I'm very under the weather, so not having to be "on" in front of the class was a welcome thing.
And when I got home, I was greeted by a wonderful smell of lemon and mint. Chris had used Aunt Fannie's Carpet Refresher in the bedroom, and the effect lifted my spirits (and senses).
11/6: being unexpectedly and really moved
...by Sarah M. Eden's Romancing Daphne and its representation of the continuing echoes of a difficult childhood.
11/5: calling
...a friend whom I hadn't spoken with in some time. She was asking for some particular advice, but we also just talked about general things, and it was nice to fall into our usual rhythms of conversation.
11/4: talking about
...Antigone with both sections of the freshman course I co-teach. We all met together in the theatre for class, and it's a stage I really like being on. Something about it just feels good. The conversation felt good too. And I got to see the students who had worked with me in September but who had then been working with my co-teacher for October. Many of them were very sweet to me, and one even said that she had worn a vest today because I often wear sweater vests.
11/2: grading
...tests and writing assignments for my Greek class more quickly and smoothly than I had anticipated.
10/31: remembering
...that I needed to do laundry so that I'd have a clean pair of pants for tomorrow!
10/30: eating
...Los Angeles Unified School District coffee cake (recipe here) at breakfast, lunch, and dinner today. After lunch I only cut myself a bite-sized piece, but I wanted to be able to say that I ate this wonderful coffee cake at all three meals today.
10/27: comparing
...the Infancy Gospel of Thomas with the Homeric Hymn to Hermes in Greek class today. I love both texts, and I was excited earlier in the semester when I thought of doing this comparison/contrast exercise with the students as a way of wrapping up the IGT. They did a really nice job of thinking about both narratives, and it was a good way to say farewell-for-now to the IGT. It has been such a pleasure to have it as part of my Tuesdays and Thursdays for the past 8 weeks.
10/26: realizing
...that I can shift my tomorrow around a little bit to work at home for longer and get some things done in the morning that I didn't finish today.
10/25: reading
...a (very short) short story while eating my soup at lunchtime. Usually I work while eating, and I suppose that reading the story still counts as work (since it was for my Daphne presentation in a few weeks), but it felt like a break.
10/24: a heads-up
...from Chris about a big traffic jam this morning. He texted me while he was stuck in it, so I was able to avoid it by doing more of my morning work at home and heading to campus a little later than usual. Hurray for home laser-printing: it meant that I could make copies of hand-outs here rather than worrying about getting to school with enough advance time to make them there.
10/23: receiving a letter
...from one of my favorite sendsomething people. It arrived yesterday, but I forgot to get the mail yesterday afternoon, so it was there waiting for me when I checked the mailbox on my morning walk. It was a thick envelope, and I enjoyed the anticipation of getting to open it at the end of my walk.
10/21: revising
...the directions for the remix assignment I'll be giving to the second group of first-year students on Monday. I tried this assignment for the first time with a different group of first-year students last month, and they did a great job. But in the course of grading their assignments, I realized there were some things that I could set up better for this second go. Although I didn't mean to spend my Friday night working on this, I'm glad I did. It'll make the rest of the weekend less busy, and it feels good to have strengthened the framework for the assignment.
10/20: sitting outside
...with a colleague for 45 minutes before my afternoon class. We talked, sipped caffeinated drinks, and enjoyed the air and light.
10/19: explaining
...to my first-year students that I think of a class as analogous to a hortus conclusus or walled garden.
10/18: Greek students and good things
At the start of Greek class today, one of the students mentioned that they weren't feeling well. I said that I had a migraine and wasn't feeling great myself. Then she suggested that we all share good things, so we did. And I told them about this blog! The student who suggested that we share good things said that if I made it through class with my migraine, I could use that as my good thing for today. I did make it through, so here it is as my good thing! And the whole exchange about good things with the class is another good thing too.
10/17: working through
...a challenging to-do list for the day. I'm closing up shop 2 1/2 hours later than I'd like, but it's worth it to not have to wake up tomorrow and feel like I'm already behind.
10/16: finishing
...The Latinist by Mark Prins today. Alas, I ended up not liking it so much (and that is an understatment). I wanted to read both it and Will Boast's Daphne in preparation for a Daphne-related discussion I'll be running in November. In both cases I had noted the novels when they were published but didn't read them at the time because I suspected that they'd rub me the wrong way. I was right. Still, I am glad that I read them and got them done pretty quickly--so now I can feel like I've done due diligence on the Daphne front and can also move on to more pleasant reading before falling asleep this evening!
10/15: lots of literature
...today. Reading about the Book of Revelation, finishing Daphne by Will Boast, starting The Latinist by Mark Prins, listening to Lindsay Ellis' Truth of the Divine, watching a production of Lesia Ukrainka's Cassandra. Boast's novel got me pretty angry (I definitely don't recommend it), I was disappointed by the production of Cassandra, and it's too soon to know what I think about The Latinist, but I'm still grateful to have spent time with so many written words today in one way or another.
10/14: discovering
...A Dictionary of Similes by Frank J. Wilstach, published in 1916 and so safely in the public domain. I'm excited to use it in future projects.
10/13: visiting
...Collins Creek with Chris. It had been quite some time since we'd gone on an outing together.
10/12: staying a little later
...than usual at school to proctor the midterm for a student who couldn't take it at the set time earlier in the day. We worked quietly in the room--me on Greek, the student on Latin--and I appreciated being in a space both calm and intent.
10/11: getting an idea
...about how to frame an assignment for the first-year students. It had been weighing on my mind recently, and I had gotten a little frustrated because, even though I need to finalize it soon, I seemed to have hit a wall in thinking about it. Then this morning, while I was doing my usual getting-ready-in-the-morning things, a solution came to me. Hurray!
10/10: finding out
...that I don't have to proctor a make-up exam tomorrow afternoon after all. If I had had to, it would have been fine. But it's nicer not to have to.
10/9: whew
I finished a big chunk of grading, grade-calculating, and assignment-returning this evening. I'm still not "caught up," but I'm not woefully behind, so I'm going to count that as a good thing. Another good thing: the student grades I calculated were very solid! I'm very glad I gave them the chance to revise one of the substantial assignments for this first half of the course: it made a real difference, and I think (hope?) the revision process helped their learning.
10/8: smiling at a coincidence
I was doing some grocery shopping in the early evening. The store was nearly empty: most people don't choose Saturday night as their grocering time. When I got to the aisle where I was going to pick up some liquid aminos, someone else was there. And he was holding a bottle of liquid aminos. What are the chances of two people on a Saturday night in suburban Arkansas reaching for the same not-often-bought-in-suburban-Arkansas item just a few seconds apart from one another? It made me laugh, and him too.
10/7: getting some work done
...this evening. It's not my preferred way to spend a Friday night, but the school-related tasks have piled up in a daunting way. I'll need to spend most of Saturday and Sunday just trying to catch up. Tonight's work at least made me feel like progress is possible.
10/6: stopping again
...at the pier on my drive to school. It was an especially good thing to do this morning: I had a meeting scheduled for mid-morning that I was worried about, and it calmed me down to breath the good air and feel the autumn sun.
10/5: getting excited
...by ideas. A senior Classics major shared a possibility for a final project, and it's lovely. It loops back to text-alteration work she did with me early in her time at college but extends it by adding a critical/interpretive layer. I talked with her in the early afternoon, and in the late afternoon I went to a discussion on some passages from the New Testament, my Greek New Testament in tow. We were being invited to think about the passages from feminist and post-colonial perspectives. It was very interesting to hear other people's ideas about the English versions of the passages, to make some connections to what they were saying, and to generate some ideas myself by seeing what resonances the Greek contained which might not be as obvious in English.
10/4: stopping
...at the pier this morning to take a few pictures on my way to work. It used to be something I did very regularly, but in the past year I've only done it a handful of times (at best). Today the light was beautiful, and some autumn colors were beginning to be reflected on the water.
10/3: less busy
...at Walmart today than yesterday. I went yesterday because I had to get Tilde the Cat's insulin refill and figured I would do my weekly grocering while I was there. It was not particularly pleasant--too many people, too much awkward navigating, and too much going on for my eyes and ears to handle. And the pharmacy didn't have Tilde's refill ready after all. When I went back this afternoon to get it, things were much calmer. At the end of a frazzling day at school, I was grateful for that.
10/2: another weekend
...of trying a few new things in the kitchen. Yesterday I made vegan sisig, which we enjoyed again for dinner today. This afternoon I made a red velvet snack cake which we had--without frosting--for dessert tonight. I'd made red velvet cake in the far past, but in general it's not my favorite. Chris likes it, though, so I wanted to give it another try. And eating it without frosting made me realize that what I don't like is the combination of the delicately flavored, light cake, the heavy cream cheese, and the double layers of both. On its own, the single-layer cake was lovely. I'm looking forward to having the rest of it in the course of the coming week.
10/1: reading a sonnet
...or rather two sonnets by Edmund Spenser. I came across one of them--Sonnet 28--earlier in the week when I was looking at Daphne-related poems and art. I wanted to think more about it today, and I decided to see what the surrounding sonnets were like. It turns out that Sonnet 28 sets up Sonnet 29 so it's important to look at them together. Taking them as a pair changes my view of Sonnet 28 in a way that I'm glad for.
And another good thing, of a different sort, for the day. Chris grew a watermelon this summer. He thought he was planting a vine for gourds, but it was a melon vine instead, and it yielded a sole, small fruit. Today he muddled some of the fruit and added gin to make a little drink for each of us. I'm not a fan of watermelon in general, but this watermelon in some Ethereal Gin was wonderful.
9/30: ending the work week
...more calmly and pleasantly than last week! I was able to do some grading in my office in the afternoon, then I had an outdoors meeting (in glorious light and air!) with my team-teaching colleague, and after that both of us participated in a book discussion group with some other colleagues.
9/29: finding
...a Daphne-inspired poem I really like, "Waking" by Margaret Kaufman. And looking at some Daphne-related art. And generally thinking about Daphne today.
9/28: discussing
...Ancient Greek drama's meditation on bodies with my freshman seminar students. They had good things to say about that and about all of today's topics for pulling together this part of the course.
9/27: being grateful
...for my Greek class this semester. They had their first test this afternoon, and it was wonderful to sit there, quietly working while they were taking it, and just feel how good they are, as people and as students.
9/25: sleeping in
I used to rely on "natural rising"--not setting an alarm--on weekends during the school year and everyday during the summer. But Tilde the Cat's situation means that we have to keep more regular hours: we need to follow a consistent schedule of feeding and insulin shots. So I haven't slept in since she came home from the cat hospital in early June. Yesterday I asked Chris if he could do the morning shift with Tilde so that I could have a day with natural rising, and he did. It felt weird to have fewer hours to do things in the morning! But I needed the rest and to be freed from the clock a bit.
9/24: enforcing
...a Saturday without schoolwork. I usually try to do that, but recently I've needed to do things on Saturdays just to stay afloat. But today I really needed to shift focus. Chris and I watched a lot of Ink Master, but I also walked for an hour on the ridge, texted back-and-forth with a friend, made fried rice (twice! for both lunch and dinner!), baked some walnut meringue cookies with Fiori di Sicilia flavoring, swept the house while listening to a novel, and ordered a bunch of postcards before the sale at Moo.com ends.
9/23: a colleague and friend
...who talked with me for a couple of hours on Friday afternoon when the situation at work just felt like it was more than I could handle.
9/22: spending a few minutes
...with the sky at sunrise and sunset, and with the campus labyrinth at midday.
9/21: being grateful
...for another bloggiversary, for Chris and the cats, for our house and food, and for an evening of work during which I managed to return myself to calmness after a flurried morning and afternoon.
9/20: spending
...some of the day without my brace on. The doctor said that I should start wearing it only part of the time. It feels strange not to have it on, and I'm hoping that enough healing has happened, but it's also very nice to be able to work in the kitchen without putting a nitrile glove over the brace on my right hand. It was much easier to make salad this evening with my hand unencumbered.
9/19: grabbing an anthology
...of haiku on my way out of the house in the morning so that I'd have it to read while waiting at my doctor's appointment in the afternoon.
9/17: getting through
...a set of grading this evening. I am still behind (sigh), but less behind than I could be.
9/16: photographing
...the clouds this morning near sunrise so I could send a picture to the Memory Cloud Atlas for today's first observation of Cloud Appreciation Day.
9/15: the last meeting of the day
...was with a beginning Latin student. I don't know her well, but she seems really nice, and she's working carefully to learn the material. The day had some non-student-related workplace frustrations, so a positive meeting with a good student was not only wonderful on its but also an especially appreciated way to close out my time at the office.
9/14: talking with a former student
...in passing this afternoon, and hearing that her internship from this past summer has turned into a full-time job that she can step into once she finishes her degree. How wonderful that she doesn't need to do job-hunting during the flurry of her senior year!
9/13: a description
...of the graphical qualities of the capital letter alpha by the five-year-old Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
9/11: using
...a somewhat new-to-me flavoring: Fiori di Sicilia. I got it last month, and I used it recently as a substitute for vanilla in a plum cake and in a chocolate cake. Today I used it in a walnut/cracker/meringue pie. It made the whole thing taste like torrone. Amazing.
9/10: cool enough
...to take my morning walk outside instead of on the treadmill. ("Cool" is relative: it was 76 degrees, but that felt like a relief compared to the temperatures earlier this summer.)
9/9: ending the week
...at school by discussing Lilliam Rivera's Never Look Back with some fellow faculty. It's one of the best feelings for me when a book group meeting goes well.
9/8: plenty of time
...to get from my dental appointment in the early-ish morning to a meeting in the later morning. I had thought it might be tight, so I was nervous, but I ended up having time for a half a cup of coffee in between.
9/5: baking
...a mock apple pie for the first time. I remember hearing about it from Chris as many as 30 years ago! He had never had it, but he mentioned it as a curiosity. And it stayed an untried curiosity all this time. But now we can say that we've had it. And yes, a pie made out of syrup-soaked crackers can taste a lot like apple pie.
9/4: ordering
...postcards of photos I've taken. I used to do this every month, but in the latter half of 2019 I stopped and have only occasionally ordered a few since then. Now I'm trying to go through my "archives" and order prints of select photos from then to now. It'll take a quite some time to get caught up (there are thousands of digital pictures to look through, and uploading to the ordering site is slow), but at least things are in motion now.
9/3: sending off
...prints of two collages which my sister and I had collaborated on: she would add an element to each and mail them to me; I'd do the same and mail them back to her. When they were done, I photographed them and had the photos made into postcards. I sent her a couple of each and a set to my mother and brother. I had dilly-dallied way too long in getting the postcards made, so it felt like a little guilt was lifting as I put them in the mailbox this morning.
9/2: hearing
...the first round of student mini-presentations in the first-year course. It's hard for the students in the first round because everything is still so new and they haven't seen any examples yet. But the three students today did a very nice job: they chose interesting passages from Iphigeneia at Aulis and had thoughtful things to say about them. I think they set the class up well for future mini-presentations.
8/31: two things
I posted some overviews of recent class meetings in our course Team so that students who have missed for illness (yes, COVID on our campus, alas) can get a sense of what topics we covered. I'm glad that I got it done before going to bed this evening.
And I managed to fit in attendance at an American Antiquarian Society webinar this afternoon. It felt good to be learning (about The New-England Primer in this case), and the part of the presentation in the conservation lab was especially nice (because it's something one doesn't usually get to see).
8/30: a student's connection
...between what we were translating in Greek class--the Infancy Gospel of Thomas--and the Twilight movies. It may seem a stretch, but the comparison she drew was very apt.
8/28: waking
...to an alarm, even though it was the weekend. This was the case all summer too, since we have to feed Tilde and give her her shot according to a regular schedule. Though part of me misses sleeping in and "natural rising," having a couple of extra hours in a weekend morning is nice. I used the extra time today to finish designing a pamphlet.
8/26: preparing Latin very early
...in the morning, while I was eating breakfast. And it's a good thing I did! When I left for school, I forgot my laptop, so I had to drive back home to retrieve it. But since my Latin was already prepped, it wasn't a problem that I lost a half-hour of office time.
8/25: working with
...the intermediate Greek students. I know them all from last year, and it is so nice to have a course in which they know one other as well as me and my ways. We collaborated our way through some of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas today, and it seemed like they felt good about our progress by the end of the class.
8/24: getting accustomed
...to giving Tilde the Cat her insulin shot. I was sheepish about it all summer, but I realized I needed to get comfortable with it now that school is back in session and Chris' teaching schedule means that he has to leave the house before it's time for her morning dose. Now that I've gotten used to it, I'm aware of how much I was being cowed by the idea of giving her a shot rather than the reality.
8/23: figuring out
...a way to keep a text-remixing activity in one of my courses that I thought I'd have to take out for scheduling reasons.
8/22: a thank you
...from a colleague for the upcycled notebooks I set out in my office building for people to take.
8/21: reading 3 articles
...about asemic writing. A nice way to spend some time on a Sunday morning.
8/19: realizing
...that I my wrist isn't up for all the handwriting I'd have to do if I made my usual semester calendar out of a blank book--so I went to the office supply store (where the aisle housing academic year calendars was busy!) and chose a 2022-2023 calendar with a royal blue cover and scattered gold stars.
8/18: learning
...some things about my individual advisees today during my one-on-one meetings with them.
8/17: meeting
...my new student advisees and their academic peer mentor, all of whom seem like nice people who are eager to have a productive and engaged year.
8/16: a good view
...from our deck this morning: clouds lit by the rising sun. I noticed just in time to grab my camera and head outside for a few pictures before the moment passed.
8/15: hurray!
I found the pieces of student artwork that I had lost sight of yesterday! And I came across them early in my search this morning, which put a prompt end to my vexation and worry.
8/14: half-full
Today has had some vexations: particularly frustrating have been a technological problem (computer/printer interface trouble) and a practical mishap (something I was really glad and relieved to find yesterday I can't find now, despite the small square footage of my school office). So that's definitely a half-empty perspective.
From the half-full perspective: I got to spend my morning, pre-technological problem, working on a pamphlet, and my office is now much, much cleaner than it was and ready for the coming week of meetings. (Hopefully the missing folder of student artwork will be rediscovered soon.)
8/12: binding
...160 notebooks for free distribution on campus. The paper is all upcycled, and most of the covers are made from manila folders otherwise headed for the recycling bin. I'd been saving up paper for a couple of years now, and though I made a slight dent in it last fall with some binding workshops on campus, there was much more piled up. I still have a fair amount of paper printed only one one side to work through, but as of now I've bound all the remnants I've saved from pamphlet projects dating back to early 2020, and that feels good.
8/11: slices
...of Milk Bar Pie in the morning (before my online meeting) and evening (after dinner). I made it yesterday so it could sit in the freezer overnight. Chris and I have been curious (for years) about it, ever since we saw it on Chef's Table, and I finally decided to give it a go. It's a recipe with more steps than my usual choices, and I don't think it'll become a regular of mine (too many steps, too many addictive tastes combined in high quantities), but it was more tasty than I thought it would be, and I'm definitely glad I tried it.
(I'm realizing that I post more about food than when I started this blog, and I'm a little self-conscious about that. But I've gotten more interested in making nice foods--partly because Chris and I exhausted the limited local restaurant options for vegetarians, and I felt I could do a better job of making the kinds of things we like; partly because it's a chance to disconnect from work and be creative in a very concrete way; partly because COVID has kept our activities more home-focused; partly because the internet makes it easy to find recipes with particular ingredients I like; partly because time spent with my mother a few years ago reminded me of how fun it can be to craft good meals.)
8/10: getting the recipe
...from my friend for her family's dumplings. She texted me back with it right away once I asked, and I'm excited to give it a try soon!
8/9: making dumplings
...for dinner. I was trying to replicate the recipe that my childhood best friend learned from her mother. I didn't succeed at that (their family recipe is much better, and I have to get it from my friend sometime), but it was still fun--to do, to eat, and to think of my friend and her mother.
8/8: having a book
...to keep me good company during an hour-long wait at the doctor's office. It was The Clergyman's Wife by Molly Greeley, and it had me so absorbed that I was worried I wouldn't hear them call my name when it finally became my turn.
8/7: driving out
...to Woolly Hollow in the morning to take pictures at the creek. I haven't been there much recently, but I went near the start of the summer, and it seemed fitting to go today as a kind of bookend, since my first back-to-school meeting on campus is tomorrow afternoon.
8/6: giving
...Tilde her insulin shot. Chris and I have been dividing Tilde-related duties this summer, and he's been giving her her twice daily shots. With the school year schedule nearing, I realize that I'll have to give her her morning shot at least three days a week, so I have to start getting used to it. It's not hard practically speaking, but it is a little hard for me conceptually speaking. Now, though, I've done it once, and there won't be a first time for it again.
8/4: completing
...all the individual PDFs for the rest of this year's Heron Tree poems. Usually I stagger them, making one a week so that each one is done and reviewed by the author just before the week it's due to be posted online. But getting them all finished and okayed by the poets before the school year starts will give me a little more breathing room once classes begin. Having one less item on the weekly to-do list is a welcome prospect.
8/3: enthusing
...about romance novels with someone else in the waiting room at the hospital today. I was waiting for an MRI for my wrist situation; she was waiting for some test results and medication for a more serious chronic condition. It was nice to talk with her about why we like to read romances, and I think it was also good for me to have a reminder that I shouldn't jump to "woe is me" so quickly. Or at least I need to contextualize my "woe is me." My wrist trouble is no joke (and I'm kind of freaked out at the possible problems that could be causing it), but it's nothing like what this young woman is dealing with.
8/2: an assortment
I read an Artforum article about a show of paintings by Hayley Barker, and I was taken with the photo of one of the paintings that the article discussed: "Front Yard at Dusk with Visitor" (viewable by clicking here.) I sent it to a friend of mine, and she mentioned nice things about it; I showed it to Chris, and he mentioned interesting things too. I was grateful to hear about what other people saw and so see through their eyes a little.
After the utter (and, for me, not productive) bewilderment that was my last audiobook (Joy Williams' Harrow), I needed to listen to something different (and reliable) as I walked. I chose The Young Clementina by D. E. Stevenson because I loved Miss Buncle's Book. The first hour of the audiobook was bliss--smart, vivid, thoughtful.
My aunt in Nebraska sent me an unexpected and wonderful note about my pamphlets. Happy to have real mail in the mailbox! And a Facebook friend messaged me good words about a pamphlet I had sent him recently.
As usual these days, I had a hard time settling into work, but I enjoyed it when I managed to get into it. Among other things, I read a well-done article about the underlying pessimism of the speech of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.
After dinner I asked Chris to get my piano keyboard down from a closet shelf (my wrist wasn't up to lifting it). I have not played it in years and years! I'm not good at all--despite 8 years of childhood piano lessons alas. But I have an easy book with some traditional Scottish songs, and I played a few of those.
8/1: the return
...of my favorite soy milk! I don't know what happened: supply chain issues due to COVID perhaps? Whatever the cause, it had been un-gettable for a year (and not just in local stores--even online). I was so happy to see it back, and we bought all the cartons of it that were on the store shelf this afternoon in case it disappears again. Special thanks to Chris, who counseled buying the lot and then helped to pick up and carry the cartons (they were the "value size," hence large) so that I wouldn't strain my wrist.
7/30: realizing
...that I could make myself (vegetarian) chicken noodle soup. I was feeling under the weather because of my COVID booster yesterday, so soup for lunch and dinner was perfect.
7/29: morning, afternoon, evening
We went to get our 2nd COVID boosters this morning. I don't know if they'll help us elude the variant that's going around, but at least we'll have done what we can as we get ready to head back to school.
I did my own Quiet Writing this afternoon! I set myself up at home rather than in the campus library, but I set my timer and kept myself going for an hour, just as I used to at school. And it was productive: it helped me organize some thoughts before a writing project next week, and it helped me develop some new thoughts.
I re-read Forever by Judy Blume this evening. I realized that it could be relevant (for comparison/contrast purposes) in my essay on Annie on My Mind, so I Kindled it and finished it in one sitting. It has been decades since I read it, but so much of it was familiar, down to particular sentences.
7/28: using old comic books
...to make grid collages. I had bought a box of them a few years ago, thinking that they could be fun to work with, and arranging squares from them today gave my spirits a lift.
7/27: rereading
...Tracy Barrett's King of Ithaka. I had last read it in 2011, and though I remembered some things, the portrayal of Helen had slipped out of memory--and that meant that I could be surprised, even shocked, all over again.
7/25: making strata
...with eggs, cheese, milk, and hard bread for lunch. I'd never made it myself before, but my mother would make it when I was little, and Chris' mother made it for us once when we were visiting, so it has memory-resonance that I was happy to (re)activate in the present.
7/24: Simon sitting
...(or, more precisely, laying) beside me while Chris and I watched TV. He's come a long way from being the skittish cat we brought in from the cold.
7/23: troubleshooting
...some technological troubles: one with printing and another with graphics-making. I didn't come up with perfect solutions, but I made some progress. And at least it's enough progress that I can let it go for the night without being completely frustrated.
7/22: sending
...an article about Eliane Radigue to my brother. I recently read it in Artforum and loved learning about her music (and then listening to some online), and I think my brother will be interested too. He may already know about her work, but even so he may like the way the article discusses it.
7/21: buying
...100 packs of Crayola 24-count crayons to donate to a back-to-school backpack program. I had a kind of roving anxiety after dinner, so I decided to head to the store to do something rather than stay at home and spin in worry.
7/20: finishing
...a book that I was excited to read but that turned out to be disappointing. I'm glad I read it (no wonderings about it now), but I'm also glad to move on to other things.
7/19: a new pair
...of reflexology sandals. I've had my old pair for maybe ten years? They're pretty much worn out, so new ones were in order!
7/18: despite
...some unsmoothness and difficulties in gaining traction today, I pretty much got done what I had hoped (emailing, snail-mailing, writing, working on a pamphlet project). One exception was exercising: I did stretches instead (including my favorite-of-all-time 10-minute "power stretch" on an old DVD), and that was a good substitution.
7/17: combining
...two things this evening: doing some sewing and beginning to rewatch the new Netflix Persuasion. Chris and I watched it together yesterday and laughed out loud at parts, and it kept me good company tonight as I ironed and pinned.
7/16: making
...more grid collages. I'm hosting a swap with a handful of people, and I'm happy that these other folks wanted to give grid collages a try and then share their results with one another. I was also happy to have some time in a flurry of colors today.
I also made chocolate chip cookies. I used this recipe (https://joyfoodsunshine.com/the-most-amazing-chocolate-chip-cookies/) because of the excellent comments it received, and the cookies turned out well. At the last minute I added cinnamon and cardamom to the batter because for me that combination is always special.
7/15: uncrowded
The grocery store was the least crowded I think I've ever seen it. I guess people didn't want to be shopping early on a Friday evening. I'm glad I did.
7/14: leaving
...the final 35 minutes of The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley to listen to tomorrow. It'll be an incentive to walk. There was a part in tonight's listening that made me gasp out loud.
7/13: ribbit!
I went kayaking after moonrise so I could enjoy the full moon. It was behind the clouds for a good bit of the time, so I just enjoyed paddling" on the night lake. Frogs were croaking loudly, and for the first time in my life I heard "ribbit" in their croaks.
7/12: two things
Having a new thought while beginning to write a short essay. Clear ideas feel hard to come by these days, so I was grateful for the aha! moment and the reminder that it can be fun to think.
Reading the phrase "scalene wish" in an Artforum article by Audrey Wollen. Wollen used it to refer to three wishes, connected but of different scopes (and not entirely reconcilable).
7/11: making
...blueberry cornbread from the Moosewood Cookbook. It's become a bit of a summer tradition.
7/10: buying
...the right color of thread to bind pamphlets made from an awkward shade of off-white/ivory/cream. I usually use thin crochet thread for binding, but the stores here don't have a shade that works, so I've been trying different embroidery flosses. I finally found one that blends with the paper in an okay way, and I realized that if I use 4 strands of the floss rather than all 6, the cleaner, less bulky line made by the thread fits better with the small size of my pamphlets. I happily used it to bind a batch of new pamphlets, and I even re-bound an older pamphlet for which I had used a less-good color match and 6 strands. It looks so much better now.
7/9: listing
...and explaining some of my favorite things for a mail swap. I almost dropped the swap before it started because I got self-conscious at the prospect of writing about myself, but I decided to find a way to be okay with it. And it was fun to think of which dear-to-me-things I wanted to share.
7/8: being glad
...that I bought Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. It arrived today (earlier than anticipated), and I've already enjoyed dipping into it.
7/7: figuring out
...a title for an otherwise wordless pamphlet I've been working on: Because Bees Are Few. It's a variation of a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson. Once I thought of it, it seemed perfect, as if I heard a little "click" in my brain.
7/6: experimenting briefly
...with "original xerographies" of my own. After I finished photocopying something for a friend, I did three prints while moving a little piece of blank paper on the glass plate as the machine was copying. The results were not what I would have guessed at all! (And one of them I quite like.)
7/5: picking up
...a copy of Bruno Munari's Original Xerographies which I ordered through interlibrary loan. Looking through it this afternoon was restful and exciting--both of which effects were welcome on a day when I've felt a bit besieged by things at large (and small).
7/4: vegan hollandaise
...on an open-faced sandwich (tartine?) with tomato slices, vegetarian "bacon," lettuce, za'atar, and pepper.
7/3: tilde eating
...eagerly at dinnertime. We need to pace her eating these days, both in terms of how much she eats and when, so it's as consistent as possible. Sometimes that's a challenge because she doesn't always feel like eating when the clock says it's time. I try to entice her with different ways of presenting the food--but there are only so many kinds of cat food that she's allowed to have, so there are limits to what I can use as bribes. After some push/pull at earlier eating sessions today, I was grateful for her enthusiasm when faced with her dinner.
7/2: turning
...my head to look behind me while kayaking and seeing some pink clouds I would have missed otherwise.
7/1: writing
...two short notes this morning that I had been nervous about, and getting two kind replies by this evening.
6/29: a cool morning
...and perfect for reading (Artforum) on the porch while drinking my coffee. The cats were happy to join me too.
6/27: a request
...from a former student. She asked which Shakespearean sonnet we analyzed in the etymology course she took with me in 2003; she said she wanted to read it again.
6/26: making
...collages of 1-inch squares. I used index cards, so each one has 15 squares. I tried not to think about them too much and just enjoy putting the squares together.
6/25: finishing
...the half-marathon as part of The Poetry Marathon. I did 12 erasures in 12 hours, and I used Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy as my source text. It was harder going and I'm less excited by my results than last year, but in a way that makes me all the more glad that I just finished.
6/24: our annual celebration
...with a Moon and June cake. It's sweet to have a holiday that we created and that only we observe. This year Chris suggested the design for the cake (a grid with each square holding a different lunar phase), and it worked out nicely.
6/23: stepping outside
...for the sunset and watching the clouds' colors go from white to pink to orange to pink again.
6/22: sending
...an email that I meant to send at the beginning of the month. I've gotten so scattered and unfocused with all the uncertainty about Tilde the Cat's health and adapting to a new schedule for taking care of her, but I'm going to try to get back on track with various professional things for the next month. Luckily, the lag in sending the email didn't matter, so if something was going to get deferred, this was a good candidate.
6/21: at last
...formatting a pamphlet whose words I chose and design I sketched months ago. I didn't intend for it to be about my father, and it's not necessarily or just about him, but it's also not not about him. And as a commentary about him, I think it might sum things up better than anything else I could say, so there's something settling and satisfying about that.
6/20: oh my goodness
Chris and I read Tove Jansson's story "The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters" out loud; I read the first half, and he the second. It was jaw-droppingly good.
6/19: continuing and beginning
Continuing to work on the responding-to-piled-up mail project. I'm not finished, but I've made significant progress.
Beginning to listen to The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, and appreciating its masterful opening.
6/18: pausing
...while making the salad for dinner in order to stamp the nubbin of the lettuce à la Bruno Munari. I did it multiple times, slightly overlapping, so the print looked like a bouquet. I put it in an envelope to my mother, who sent me some celery stamping she had done recently.
6/17: starting and finishing
...Nancy Garden's Annie on My Mind within 24 hours. There's a bit of a tie to Classics (one of the characters mentions Aristophanes' speech from Plato's Symposium), so I kind of read it for work, but it was clearly a case of work's being a pleasure.
6/15: taking the bride
...to Woolly Hollow for some pictures. Here she is, raising her hand while standing in the dry cascade.
6/13: working on
...some responses to mail I've received. The past year and a bit have been overwhelming, and I just stopped sending mail as regularly as I used to. I kept a basket of things received, though, and now I can work through it. They are almost all things sent "with no strings attached," so it's not like folks were necessarily waiting for a reply, but I still like to thank them and send something back. It felt good to make a start on that.
6/12: reading
...these haiku this morning: https://www.readpoetry.com/10-vivid-haikus-to-leave-you-breathless/. I'd come across 3 of them before, but the others were new to me, and I especially like Hokusai's one with the poppy.
6/11: typing
...an English translation of Sophocles' Antigone. For a digital erasure activity in one of my classes next semester, I need an MS Word version of the translation the students will be reading. So over the past 3 weeks I've typed a few pages a day, and now it's done. I enjoyed the mechanics of copy typing, especially at a time when my mind has been preoccupied and scrambled by cat health worries. It was also good to get inside the play this way, word by word.
6/10: unexpected
If I walk in the late morning, I'm likely to cross paths with the mail carrier as they drive along the ridge. Today the mail person was someone different than our usual person, and when he drove by me the second time he wished me a good day.
6/9: working out
...a pamphlet format. I thought I had one that would work earlier this week, but it didn't pan out. Yesterday it was vexing me. Today I think I found something that I can be happy with. Amidst cat-health crises, it felt good to have a space of relative calm in which to think about something else.
6/7: a variety
...of goodnesses today:
I took a morning walk in new shoes, attempting to find a pair that won't hurt my feet.
Tilde the Cat ate some food on her own so that we didn't need to use the feeding tube for all of her daily nutrition.
Tilde also slept on a chair with Emma the Cat for part of the afternoon, a sign that she's feeling better.
While reading today I came across two instances (in two different texts) of astonished applied to unusual things: a dwelling (actually a kind of cave structure, in Vergil's Aeneid) and the evening (in a haiku by Ole Bungaard).
We had lentil soup for dinner, made from a new-to-me recipe. The lemon juice and zest in it made a big (and good) difference.
I got an idea for a new pamphlet.
6/6: a little Latin
A student turned in their first report for a summer research project using Vergil's Aeneid, and it led me to think about poetic meter and translation issues. It also prompted me to read a bit of Vergil's Latin myself while drinking some afternoon coffee.
6/4: waking up
...with Tilde the Cat also on the bed. She woke soon after I did, and walked a few steps closer to me and then fell back to sleep. She is not at all out of the woods health-wise, but she's now in the at-home part of the recovery process. Fingers crossed and gratitude given for any pain-free time she spends with us now.
6/3: a bloom
...on the one hollyhock that survived last year's Arkansas summer. Chris moved it into his grow-tent for the autumn, winter, and early spring, and it thrived. It grew from heritage seeds sent to us from my aunt who lives in Nebraska.
6/1: getting to visit
...Tilde the Cat in the animal hospital. We went down yesterday, too, but she was too out-of-it for a visit then. She was still fairly out-of-it today, but we were able to pet her, scratch under her chin, and talk to her. She seemed to know it was us.
5/31: organizing
...for the summer by making a calendar and straightening up my home office a little.
5/29: getting through
...a difficult day. It started happily enough: grocery shopping, beer and soft pretzels (at home) for lunch to celebrate Chris' birthday, pamphlet-making in the afternoon. But Tilde the Cat wasn't herself, and as the day wore one we got more and more worried. We took her to the emergency vet in the early evening. On the phone they said it would be a 3-4 hour wait; when we got there, they wanted to turn us away and said the wait would be 8-12 hours. We stayed. They saw us after about 4 hours, and Tilde needed to stay over for care we can't give her at home. It is really sad and scary not to have her here with us, but I am glad that we took her to get looked at and that she is getting treatment. Fingers crossed.
5/28: spending
...the afternoon and the evening on pamphlet-making. A long-lingering project has now (I think) reached its final form: I just needed time to try some things out without feeling pressed, and that wasn't possible during the semester.
5/27: doing typical-for-me things
...that had become untypical recently: driving out to Woolly Hollow to take some pictures, working on the photos on my computer, and readying some postcards and pamphlets for the mail.
5/26: 3 for today
Walking in the cool morning.
Reading a little Greek in the afternoon.
Meeting up with my mother and two friends via conference call to play cards together via an app.
5/23: finishing
...the last meeting and last bureaucratic task of the academic year.
...The Hearing Trumpet. I wish I could have a picnic with other people who love this book.
5/22: preparing
...a photo postcard to head off to a friend in tomorrow's mail. I've fallen very out of postal touch with folks in the past year, and I'm thinking that maybe I can pick up some threads of correspondence this summer.
5/21: Persephone
...has been on my mind these days, as I've been thinking about a possible course focused on her story and its retellings. Today during my walk Persephone crossed my path unexpectedly: there were Persephone echoes in The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, which I've been listening to. I also finished reading Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden, which uses and revises the myth very intently.
5/18: writing
...an email of gratitude to a colleague whose work I've respected over the years. I felt a little awkward sending it because I don't know him well, but he wrote back such a genuine thank-you that I'm glad I didn't let the awkwardness keep me from hitting the "send" button in the first place.
5/17: trying
...various strategies to get out of a funk (caused by a few not-so-great comments on my student feedback forms from the semester). I went for a walk, talked with a friend (but not about the comments), made a nice soup for dinner, worked on a hand-out for next year that will (I hope) explain some of the things that students didn't like this year, and did some bureaucratic work so that the semester's end-tying can be over sooner rather than later. The not-so-great comments were in the definite minority, and I need to remember that. But it felt like they had animus behind them, so much so that the students' emotions seem to have distorted facts about what I did / didn't do, and that unsettled me.
5/16: heading out
...on the lake after dinner. Kayaking on a weeknight? A clear sign that it's summer.
5/15: starting
...to listen to The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington during my morning walk, and then getting to listen some more while I swept the floors this evening.
5/14: receiving
...a wonderful email from a graduating student. I was humbled by her kind words and so grateful that she spent part of her graduation day writing a note to me. I will miss her in my classes, and I think she's going to be an awesome in her next "chapter," becoming a teacher. I'm glad that I was able to bracket my self-consciousness enough to write her back this evening and send her my good wishes and congratulations.
5/12: being in touch
...with a number of different people today. Non-work-related communication was another thing that got put on hold during the end-of-semester whirlwind, and it felt good to pick up those ongoing conversations again.
5/11: getting a few takers
...for a faculty/staff summer reading group that I'm co-organizing with a friend.
5/10: beginning
...to address a "to do" list of practical things that has been growing during the end-of-semester push when most else gets put on hold. It was good to begin to take a few things off hold.
5/9: 4 things
1. Finishing grading. There are still a few things to ponder, and the final grades still need to be officially filed, but all the individual papers, tests, and quizzes have been graded and recorded.
2. Baking cookies. It's been about a month and a half since I last made cookies. The time since spring break has just been so busy that I didn't think I'd be able to let go of other tasks enough to allow baking cookies to feel fun. Today as a break I made the easy peanut butter cookie recipe and added powdered freeze-dried strawberries. I was going for a peanut-butter-and-jelly taste. It kind of worked. I think I need to add more next time. And/or I may try freeze dried grapes.
3. Watching a video of a female bluebird building a nest (and laying an egg) in a bird box!
4. Finishing erasures of Book 1 and Book 2 of the Odyssey. It's something I had started in late March, and it's been nice to turn to it during these last weeks of the semester.
5/8: using lemon
...as part of the salad dressing this evening. I've been wanting to replicate a salad I used to get at a restaurant in town, and tonight's attempt with the lemon came very close.
5/7: listening
...to the students' Greek recordings, and being grateful for the one student who--throughout the semester--started her recordings by saying a few words of greeting to me. It wasn't necessary (and I don't hold it against the other students that they didn't), but it sure was nice.
5/6: school, home, outside
I proctored my last exam of the school year in the morning. When I finished and went back to my office, I found a gift and card from one of the students waiting for me. Very unexpected and sweet.
The rest of my work-day involved grading, which I can do at home, so I came home for lunch with Chris--a nice break from routine.
And I went for two walks: the first in the late afternoon and the second after dinner. I meant the late afternoon walk to be my full outing for the day, but it was a little hot, so I cut it short and waited until the sun was lower in the sky in the early evening. That was a good decision, and the air near sunset was filled with the smell of honeysuckle.
5/4: taking the time
...to go walking this evening. There is a lot of grading to do at this point in the semester, but I needed to move and be in the spring air.
5/3: a few
...sprigs of crimson clover are blooming at the bottom of our hill. Chris and I had scattered seeds there in the hope that some would come up. It's not a robust showing, but it still made me happy to see.
5/2: talking with
...a first-year student this morning. She was in a class with me last semester, and this semester she participated in a creative co-curricular project which I ran. Today she was wrapping up her part of the project. It was great that she did it, and I enjoyed having a chance to talk with her one-on-one about it.
5/1: better
I had the blues yesterday, but today I managed to walk in the morning, and that helped me spend the rest of the day in a better state.
And I had thought that today's chunk of grading would take about 5 hours. It took 3 instead--much better than 5!
4/30: making
...rice pancakes for lunch. It had been too long since we'd had them, and they were as wonderful as always.
4/29: hearing
...my Greek students say a line of Sappho's poetry out loud all together--and the rhythm came through.
4/28: doing an activity
...with the Myth students, which involved them chalking passages from our ancient texts on the sidewalk on campus. It was a nice way to spend our last class session, taking myth from our classroom out into the world.
4/27: doing an activity
...with the Greek students, using an Aesopian fable about a weasel who gets turned into a human maiden.
4/26: fixing
...some trouble with my work computer's audio playback on my own. Or at least it seems I fixed it! I'll keep my fingers crossed that the fix sticks.
4/25: better
...upon waking than I was when I went to sleep. Still with sinus trouble, but without the hot-cold-hot-cold feelings of illness.
4/24: some grading
...this afternoon went more quickly than I thought it would. I'm feeling very under-the-weather, so this was an especially welcome thing.
4/23: the particular orange
...of California poppies. Chris planted some in a large (large!) flowerpot, and several of them are blooming.
4/22: sharing
...a student's excitement at how the novel we're reading in class--Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera--uses both Spanish and English.
4/21: filling a tote bag
...with little bags of potato chips at the campus snack bar. I'm trying to use up the "dining dollars" that are part of my compensation. I called Chris (who was working from home today) to tell him that I just bought 24 bags of chips, and he laughed.
4/20: good news
...about a student's receiving summer funding for a project I'll be supervising. I commented on many drafts of the proposal, and I'm glad that that work (on both our parts) yielded results.
4/19: good numbers
...in Tilde the Cat's bloodwork today. We had to start feeding her special food to keep her glucose down, and even though she's only been on it for awhile, it is working. Hurray! And I'm grateful to Chris for taking her to the vet to get her on a good track.
4/17: dogwoods and birdsong
We visited the dogwoods in our woods this afternoon, and then I went on my walk along the ridge, where I was appreciative of the birds' singing. When I was talking with my friend on the phone during my walk yesterday, she could hear the birds and said how nice that was (she's in Indiana, where it's still wintry), and that made me more aware of them today.
4/16: talking
...with a friend on the phone while I was taking my walk this afternoon: it had been months since we'd spoken! It was so good to hear her voice, share thoughts, and laugh.
4/14: being grateful
...that we get to talk about a picturebook in one of my classes tomorrow. I put together the slides of each spread this evening, and I'll enjoy taking notes on the pages as I finish my prep in the morning.
4/13: making good use
...of some cancelled meetings with students (they cancelled, not me): I graded papers instead and got all caught up on paper-grading. That will change next week when more come in, but it feels great for now (and rare for me at this point in the semester).
4/12: finally knowing
...where Simon the Cat goes when we can't find him. Chris noticed it on Sunday evening, and this evening Simon was there again, curled up in a little cat cubby tucked into a corner at the end of the hall. It's been a mystery for months, yet he's been hiding in plain sight. We just never looked there because the cats never seemed to take an interest in it.
4/10: writing
...an honest email about an uncomfortable situation. Now it's off my mind before I go to bed. I had worried that, if I didn't respond, worrying about it would keep me up for most of the night.
4/9: foregoing
...my usual Saturday practices of an hour-long walk (or kayaking time on the lake) and non-school activities. Usually that wouldn't be a good thing, but today I needed to catch up on work, and I feel more relaxed now that I have.
4/8: good preparation on yellow paper
...by two of my advisees who needed to complete their pre-registration for next year before the cut-off time at the close of business. We had met earlier in the week, and I had written down for them what they needed to figure out before today's finalization meeting--and they had. I had written their "to do" lists on yellow paper for them, and it was cheering to see them pull out the colored sheet of paper and read off what courses they had decided on so I could enter them into the computer.
4/7: Greek Nescafe
...in my office. I had run out of ground coffee without realizing it, so that was a bump in the morning when I went to make myself a cup, but I did have the Greek instant coffee that I use to make frappes, and it was a fine substitute for hot coffee too.
4/6: enjoying
...seeing what passages from ancient literature my Myth students choose to compare and contrast with one another. They are drawing out all sorts of interesting connections. I'm glad I made this part of their assignment, and I'm a bit sorry that I'm the only person who gets to see everyone's choices.
4/5: the smell of spring
...as I walked past the dogwood and other flowering things on my way from the parking lot to my office building in the morning and then from my building to my car in the late afternoon.
4/4: a flourishing redbud
...at the edge of the lake. The redbuds are having difficulty this year. I think a blast of winter came at a crucial time for them, and they're not blooming as fully and spectacularly as usual. The one at the lake, though, is doing really well, which cheers me. I'd like to paddle out to it on my kayak this weekend, but I don't know if I'll have the time. I'm glad that I can at least see it on my drive to school in the mornings.
4/3: being in the right place
...at the right time: as we were looking out of the windows in our main room this morning, I saw a road runner jump from our roof onto our deck and walk around.
4/1: leaving a fish
...(or rather a copy of a fish engraving) on Chris' office door in honor of the poisson d'avril.
3/31: reading
...Robert Bagg's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trakhis in preparation for class this afternoon. It's not one I've taught with before, and it was nice to read it at home with coffee in the morning before heading to school. I think students did well with it, too, so I'm glad I made the change.
3/28: having a nice talk
...with one of my advisees about their schedule for next year. It's not an advisee who has come to talk with me much, so I was especially glad that we got to spend some time together this afternoon.
3/26: a full draft
...of a pamphlet I've been imagining for awhile. It still needs some work, but at least it's not just in my mind any longer.
3/25: outdoors
...for a lot of today. I walked in the morning, sat on the porch for part of the afternoon, went to an outdoor birthday celebration for one of our neighbors in the late afternoon, and visited the dock at sunset.
3/24: a variety
...of good things:
Sweeping the floors and tidying my home office.
Doing some erasures of pages from Homer and from Twain.
Walking down to the lake to watch a colorful sunset.
Downloading and working through the photos I took at the lake. (Photo-processing time has been weirdly hard to come by recently.)
Seeing that folders of old emails that I thought had been a casualty of my email provider's transfer to a new platform were suddenly restored after a few weeks of being missing.
3/23: less trouble
...with arthritis today (knock on wood). It had been bad for the past four days in a it-hurts-when-I'm-just-sitting-or-lying-down kind of way. Today it was such a pleasure to walk that I walked longer than I had meant to. The good spring air was an incentive to keep walking too.
3/22: finding
...the holiday lights on when I came out of the bedroom and into the main room this morning. Chris had turned them on. We decided not to take them down when the holiday ended, and it cheers me to see their colors.
3/21: dealing
...with a flat tire. We had driven out to Cove Creek for a walk, but as we pulled into the parking area there, the low tire pressure indicator sounded. We must have run over something sharp on the gravel roads we had been driving on to get there. When we got out of the Jeep, we heard the tire hissing, so we got back in and headed back before it got too low to drive on at all. We pulled into the parking lot of a Dollar General store in Wooster and changed the tire there. Two different men so kindly asked if they could help us out, but we managed it ourselves.
3/20: oh my goodness
I had no idea how wonderfully straightforward it would be to make boiled wontons using wrappers from the grocery store. I mixed up a filling of ginger, vegetarian "chicken," carrots, green onion, soy sauce, and cornstarch, and then we wrapped it into the pre-cut squares. After boiling them, we ate them with some chili garlic broth, and they were so good.
3/19: three things
In the morning I finished some grading that I had hoped to finished yesterday afternoon. It felt good to get it done, and I especially liked seeing some of the comparison/contrasts that students had to do for part of the assignment.
In the afternoon I worked on some materials for the erasure workshop I'll do at the end of the month.
In the evening I looked up at the stars in a clear sky.
3/18: deciding
...to do an erasure workshop at school after spring break. I thought I had decided against doing one this year, but then I felt the urge, so I scheduled the day, time, and room while at school today and this evening at home worked on a poster to advertise it.
3/17: Irish soda bread
...for breakfast, sent by my mother. That taste at this time of year is a thread of continuity across the decades.
3/16: good sentences
...chosen by my students to illustrate how choices about form can reinforce content. The students who needed to bring examples today chose interesting ones, and the other students did a nice job of adding their observations.
3/15: a work-around
I wanted to write sentences about cake for Greek class today, but the students don't know the Ancient Greek word for cake, so I used the phrase the beautiful bread instead.
3/14: a lightbulb moment
One of my students is trying to put together a research project for the summer but is having a little trouble coming up with something that will work well idea-wise, strutcture-wise, time-wise, and ability-wise. This morning I thought of a comparison project involving various translations of Vergil's Aeneid that I think will work very well and that gives the student a focus and structure but also space to make the project their own. And there are some recent translations of the Aeneid that seem like they'll be interesting to work on and explore.
3/13: delighted by
...an answer on one of the Myth students' tests. They were asked to identify Eumaeus, they loyal swineherd from Homer's Odyssey. Eumaeus is addressed multiple times by the poet as "you" (which is unusual), so one student began their answer, "You, Eumaeus, are..."
3/12: enjoying
...a walk while the snow was still around but melting fast in warming air. I saw an eagle and finished listening to The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.
3/11: an assortment
...of good things to end the work-week:
A student was excited about officially declaring a Classics minor.
A prospective student in Greek class wrote down all the notes--no mean feat for someone who's taken no Greek before and doesn't know the Greek alphabet.
In Greek we translated one of my favorite passages in Ancient Greek: the verse in Luke where Gabriel refers to Mary's future baby as "the holy thing"--something that usually gets reworded in published English translations.
In my afternoon class, we shared moments of humor in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.
A colleague and I left campus early to beat the bad weather. We didn't coordinate it, but we were locking our offices at the same time and so headed out to the parking lot together. And our timing was perfect: just as I was getting home, the precipitation was getting solid and icy.
The precipitation didn't stay icy, though: it turned into one of the best kinds of snow, fluffy and picturesque. I was able to work at our long table this afternoon, which gave me a great view of the outside as the snow was falling. When I finished my work, I put on my coat and boots and tromped in the snow for a bit.
After dinner I walked with Chris to a neighbor's house where he was going to hang out for awhile, then I continued walking on my own. I had my lantern in the dark, and being in the snow and air and night was wonderful.
3/10: time
...with Hesiod, this morning and this afternoon. I tried out (somewhat successfully) a new format for my class session on the Theogony, and it was nice to have one-on-one time with the poem before that.
3/8: no one rushing
...to finish the Myth test today. It was trying a new format for tests in this course, so I wasn't sure if it would be too long or too short. Maybe it was just right.
3/6: spotting
...a Lenten rose in the woods as I walked this afternoon. Then later, this evening, a friend posted photos she had taken of some Lenten roses during her walk today (in a totally different part of the US).
3/5: heading out
...for a morning walk at Cove Creek with Chris. There had been a controlled burn there recently, so there weren't the early spring flowers we had been hoping for, but Chris caught a little snake along the trail and we admired it for awhile, then later I spotted a little snake too. And some trees were just beginning to bud and flower.
3/4: clearing
...some "to do" items off my list before leaving work this afternoon. I am not ahead (at all), but I am not behind.
3/3: time with Homeric Greek
...this morning, as I prepared some passages to share with the Myth class so they could see how different translators tried to bring certain aspects of the ancient language into English. Penelope's wordplay in book 19! The use of the dual in book 23!
3/2: surprise visitors
...to my office hours this afternoon: a former student, his partner, and their puppy! I was in the middle of a session with a student, and they were just passing through town, so we couldn't really talk much, but we all cooed over the puppy and shared general good feelings.
3/1: coming back from campus
...and seeing pelicans on the lake (still!), then finding that Chris had heated up some cheese dip so we could have a few tortilla chips with dip while we were getting the rest of dinner ready.
2/28: unexpected
...quiet during my office hours today. Though I generally like it when students come for help, having no visitors today meant that I could grade all the Greek tests before leaving work. And that was a good thing, because my evening tasks took me longer than I anticipated.
2/27: spending some time
...digitally tinkering with photos I'd taken as far back as November. I haven't been taking pictures as much recently, and I've been downloading and processing them much less regularly. I don't even understand how I had time to do more with photography in the past; I feel too overloaded these days to add another thing. But it felt good to work with some of the pictures and be surprised at what I had taken and forgotten.
2/26: taking pictures
...of green grass, fallen leaves, and various twigs caught under thin layers of ice. A new subject for iPhone photos during my walk this afternoon.
2/25: ah!
This morning I saw two bluebirds sitting on the electricity lines outside our house. It had been too long since I'd seen any in the neighborhood. Definite rejoicing.
2/24: punctuating
...a work-at-home day by talking with my mother on the phone for an hour this afternoon.
2/23: a good virtual session
...on Greek pronunciation with a student this afternoon. Usually doing Greek via MS Teams is awkward, but today it worked so well. I was able to share a document into which I kept typing new words with slight spelling changes so we could practice specific sounds. The student seemed to make real progress in our 45 minutes together--and the virtual format was perhaps even better than an in-person session would have been.
2/22: similes
...that my students noticed in the Odyssey and brought up in our conversation today without my prompting. There were some other good moments of discussion traction in class today as well, and I was grateful for them.
2/21: midwinter break
It was a day of no classes, so I slept 45 minutes later than usual on a weekday. Chris and I spent the morning on errands, including a doctor's appointment in Little Rock. In the afternoon I went for a walk. This evening I caught up on grading (only a temporary victory, since more papers will come in tomorrow) and replied to a wonderful email from a former student.
2/20: eating pot-pie
...(of the vegetarian variety) for breakfast! We had leftovers from yesterday's dinner, and it was a fun way to start the day.
2/19: going out to woolly hollow
...with Chris for a walk, which entailed a number of good things.
It's so good that Chris' foot has healed enough to make a walk possible.
Being out in the sun was welcome after so much time spent indoors these days.
The color on the creek was different from what I've seen there on other walks, and it's nice to be surprised by seeing a familiar sight in a new way.
And on the drive back we saw a bluebird, which I had been hoping for.
2/18: still seeing
...pelicans on the lake in the morning! This might be the longest they've stayed around.
2/17: things taking a turn
...for the better after a rocky morning and early afternoon. Students in my late afternoon class did some especially nice close reading, and this evening I enjoyed some prep work for tomorrow.
2/16: typing
...the first poem PDF of Heron Tree volume 9, which we'll start publishing next week. The poem is glorious on its own and perfect as the first one in this year's series. It's by a poet whom we've published before, and I feel so lucky that we have the chance to publish her work again. It was so exciting and refreshing to spend time with her piece this evening that I lost my tiredness while readying it.
2/15: getting caught up in thought
I had a hard time concentrating at times today, but at other times I got wrapped up in thinking in ways that felt nice. I made some new-to-me observations about book 14 of the Odyssey. I talked with a friend and colleague about her upcoming conference paper and some similarities with my recent work on romance novels. I looked at some ancient sources adapted by Rick Riordan in The Sea of Monsters and was surprised that my evening prep time flew by.
2/14: two sweet things at school
A friend brought me a homemade chocolate cheesecake!
And I stayed late to work with a student on her Greek homework after dinner. Though I'm trying to minimize evenings on campus, it was the right thing to do in this case: the building was quiet and there weren't other meetings or classes or waiting students limiting our time.
2/13: trying out
...a new cookie combination: I added powdered strawberries and some mint extract to a lemon shortbread batter. I was inspired by the taste of the "echinacea enhancer" strawberry mint lemonade that I used to buy in Los Angeles. I think next time I make them, I'll cut down on the mint extract a little, but all in all, I got the taste!
And while I'm on the subject of Los Angeles tastes, Chris and I had LaBrea Bakery bread for lunch today. So strange (and sweet) to find that part of our lives in the grocery story in Arkansas.
2/12: three surprises
Two were in books: one in the book I'm reading (Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land), and one in the book I'm listening to (Michel Faber's Crimson Petal and the White). I didn't see either coming, and it's nice to be surprised and yet realize that the moves make sense such that, looking back, they're not twists at all.
Another kind of surprise awaited me in my mailbox today: a package from a high-school friend. Just seeing his handwriting on the box cheered me up. The package included some soaps made by his partner, and they are making my home office (where the opened package is right now) smell so good that I'm not sure I want to transfer them into the shower to use!
2/9: looking at sentences
...with students. We talked about the sentences that end the first nine chapters of Rick Riordan's Sea of Monsters, and they had nice things to say about individual sentences and about general trends.
2/8: finding
...a great snippet from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations to share with the Greek students: o kosmos alloiōsis. The order of things is the process of becoming other. This is extraordinary. I ran into a colleague I hadn't talked to in years at the end of the day, and I told her about it, and she loved it too.
2/7: starting
...the work-week on a nice note by seeing a rabbit hop across my path as I walked down the hill to my car this morning and also by spending some time appreciating the Jack Frost patterns on my car windows.
2/5: coming together
I've been tinkering with some ideas for projects for the past two weeks or more, and nothing seemed to click. Today there was some clicking for two different projects. I try not to get anxious and frustrated when things don't come together quickly, but I'll admit I was getting frazzled at being stymied on two fronts, and it feels good to end the day unfrazzled.
2/4: good things in books
I got to think about similes as I was comparing a Vergilian simile to one from Rick Riordan's Lightning Thief. While I was making the salad for dinner, I told Chris that it always makes a day better when I get to think about similes.
After dinner Chris and I read more of Moominland Midwinter aloud. It was a fantastic chapter about a blizzard (among other things), which made it fitting material for a snowed-in day.
And I looked at Twain's Extracts from Adam's Diary with a view to using it in a project soon.
2/3: outright cancelled
I didn't teach online today after all: my school officially cancelled everything due to weather. That didn't make the day "free" for me (like snow days of childhood), since I spent a lot of time figuring out how to reconfigure things to cover the missed material and rearrange assignments. Still, I think it was good for me to have a break from people (other than Chris and the cats) today.
2/2: being relieved
...that we'll be allowed to shift our classes online tomorrow and Friday if the winter weather that's coming our way makes getting to campus tricky. In the past that hasn't been an option, and the decision to drive into town or not on icy and/or snowy days was stressful. In December we had gotten word that we wouldn't be able to go online for weather-related reasons; I'm glad that the administration changed its view.
2/1: two Greek things
The quotation I started Greek class with today came from Hippocrates, and it made me think about the impetus behind ancient (and maybe modern?) medicine: to find any patterns amid the great varieties and differences of "both souls and bodies," to use Hippocrates' phrasing.
And then I lingered on a simile in the Odyssey that I can't believe I hadn't been struck by before: the Phaeacian women's hands, moving quickly while weaving, are like leaves on a tree.
1/31: a selection
...of good things to start the work week:
Pelicans on the lake again!
Students' careful, close readings of passages from The Lightning Thief.
Office hour appointments that went more smoothly than I thought they might.
Catching up on email and some record-keeping.
Having defrosted pierogi casserole for dinner, and making a salad with lettuce, apple, and green onions to go with it.
Spending some time this evening with Chris.
Drafting an overdue note.
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