3/20: a surprise
...thank-you card and gift certificate from a former advisee, left in my mail-holder this afternoon.
3/17: looking at
..."Typhon," a painting by Peter Tobias, with my Myth students. I'm always glad when I find a more abstract piece that I can use in class, and the students seemed to enjoy talking about this one.
3/16: lens wipes
...from last century, probably the 1960s or 70s. Chris brought some quality lens-cleaning sheets back from his last visit to New Jersey. His father must have had them for his cameras or other equipment. I am using them to clean my glasses, and they are really (really) good.
3/12: hearing
...the students' thoughts about Aman-Jean's painting of Hesiod and the Muse (link here). I show it most years in the Myth class, and I think this year's comments about it were especially good. It's also a nice reminder of my years in Los Angeles, during which I came across this painting in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
3/11: finally
...the forsythia is blooming. Its flowers are later than the other forsythia bushes on the ridge, so I had begun to think that it might not blossom at all this year. I'm glad I was wrong.
3/10: falling
...when I got out of the car at the end of the day was not a good thing. But I was glad that I was at home when I did it (rather than school), that it didn't damage my clothes, that I was wearing my wrist brace (so that I didn't further damage my wrist), and that my shirt had long sleeves (so even though the cut is bad, it didn't get dirty).
3/9: reading
...Richmond Lattimore's translation of Hesiod's Theogony in preparation for tomorrow's Myth class. It's the version through which I first encountered the Theogony (back in 1988 I think?), but I've used different translations when I've taught the text. Re-reading it now makes me realize why I liked the poem so much when I first encountered it those many years ago.
3/8: visiting
...the flowering plum trees in the woods on the ridge. It is a good year for them, and Chris and I spotted many that we did not know about (or did not remember from 2021, the last unexpectedly robust plum year when we did a survey).
3/3: reading
...Hawthorne's description of Shadow Brook and remembering being there with Chris. Meeting up with that paragraph this evening gave me a boost I really needed.
3/2: tomato galette
...leftovers for dinner. It was nice, at the end of a weird day, to have to make only a little salad to go with food I'd made over the weekend.
3/1: returning
...to our brownie experiments. How long to bake them so that they're done but not overdone? What counts as "just right?" Today's time, 28 minutes, might be the answer.
2/26: end-of-the-day
...conversations with colleagues. They weren't long, but they were genuine. One colleague mentioned that she had heard about my pamphlets being exhibited and offered congratulations; the other shared impressions of the semester so far and the challenges it's presented.
2/25: simultaneously
...reading Hawthorne's Wonder Book and Walpole's Castle of Otranto and noticing some similarities.
2/24: looking at similes
...in the Odyssey with students. They noticed and thought of many good things.
2/21: seeing
...a dandelion during my morning walk and the beginnings of blooms on the Japanese quince on our deck. It made me remember that I also saw dandelions and Japanese quince blossoms at school this week.
2/19: the beginnings
...of tree blooms. The magnolias on campus are opening up, and I saw some blossoms on other trees as I drove to school this morning.
2/17: taking the time
...to make Shrove Tuesday pancakes even though it was a long day and we both had work to do in the evening. The lemon sauce turned out well, and I remembered just in time that last year I added za'atar to the crepes and it was good, so I did it again this year.
2/16: organizing
...a long shopping list to make the grocering smoother. (I know: obvious. But I usually don't do it, which leads to a fair amount of backtracking.)
2/15: getting out
...of a funk by making good-for-me (Jasberry) rice, taking a walk, watching the water, and beginning to listen to Love, Sex, and Frankenstein by Caroline Lea.
2/12: having
...lunch at home on a school day. It felt like a luxury to do course prep at home in the morning and make myself fried rice before heading in to teach.
2/11: posting
...the last of the poems for Heron Tree volume 12. There's still the PDF compilation of all the volume 12 poems to put together this summer, but tonight's posting marks the end of an era, since we'll be taking a hiatus from Heron Tree. Though Chris and I both need a break from being publishers, I'm glad we did it. It's something we had wanted to do for a long time, so now no regrets. I also learned a lot, made connections, and re-engaged poetry--things I'm grateful for.
2/10: realizing
...that I needed to explain to the students that a page is not just a conveyer of information: it can be an experience.
2/9: listening
...to Frolic Architecture by Susan Howe and David Grubbs, which I learned about through a friend's Facebook post.
2/8: quiet writing
...this morning. It was a little shorter than usual because I wanted to make time for a walk before lunch, but I managed to write myself into some clarity about an upcoming assignment I need to devise for one class and to begin sketching plans for a new pamphlet (prompted by the Swift vowel riddle poem).
2/7: morning, afternoon, evening
In the morning I wrote valentines. In the afternoon I mailed them and took a walk. In the evening I worked through a stack of grading.
2/5: learning the names
...of the Myth students. Many of them seemed happy when I called on them correctly in class and even supportive when I had to pause for a second to remember who they were.
2/4: a benefit
...of a boring TV show: it helped me fall asleep when I was too wound up to concentrate on bedtime reading.
2/3: beginning
...The Odyssey in the Myth class. It's the first time I'm using Emily Wilson's translation, and though I've been glad to teach Robert Fagles' translation in the past, it's good to have a change. I also had to change the first day of readings to start to make up for last week's cancellations due to weather. We read both Book 1 and Book 2 for today (instead of just Book 1). That worked well and took us comfortably just to the end of class.
2/1: being glad
...that I found Ruth Manning-Sanders' short story "The Skull" so that students could compare it with Jon Klassen's picturebook The Skull. (Klassen was inspired by Manning-Sanders' short story but takes the tale in different directions.) I'm looking forward to tomorrow's class discussion.
1/31: reading
...The Book about Moomin, Mymble, and Little My out loud to Chris as just a little pleasure this morning.
1/29: dandelions
...on a card in the mail. It was an unexpected and very welcome note, and the fact that the card had dandelions on it put a smile on my face even before I read the message.
1/27: listening
...to 2 pieces by Pancrace Royer which were mentioned in a novel I was reading today: Le Vertigo and La Marche des Scythes.
Later in the evening I texted my brother about them, and he suggested that I compare La Marche des Scythes to Yngwie Malmsteen's (metal) guitar music, a connection I never would have made.
1/26: using
...brown jasmine rice (rather than white rice) for my lunchtime fried rice. I want to see if I can move toward having more whole grains.
1/25: birds
...eating sunflower seeds that Chris had scattered for them. And bluebirds drinking from the heated (hence not iced-over) birdbath.
1/23: seeing
...one of my advisees at her campus job today, and she was so happy to be there working that it made me happy too.
1/22: figuring out
...some logistics for a new ongoing assignment I'm trying with my Myth class this semester, an "illuminated reading diary."
1/19: articulating
...new policies for making up missed class meetings. I don't know how smoothly they'll work out, but I've thought about them a lot. Now it's time to put them into practice, so I added them to the syllabus information I'll distribute when I meet my classes for the first time tomorrow.
1/17: finding
...this (link) image of Cerberus and Psyche by Edmund Dulac as I was thinking about a possible multi-day class activity involving depictions of Cerberus.
1/16: dropping off
...the materials for the travelling exhibit that my pamphlets will be part of. Then Chris and I went out for lunch.
1/11: meeting up
...with a poem I remember from my childhood. Instead of getting a page-a-day art calendar, I bought myself A Poem for Every Day of the Year, and today's offering was a Robert Frost poem that I remember from a grade-school reader. I can even picture the illustration that was in the textbook: a crow in motion amid snow shaken from a tree.
And another good thing: Emma the Cat realizing--as soon as we walked in the door at lunchtime--that we had brought french fries home. He loves them, so I gave him a few, and it made me happy to see him so happy.
1/9: connecting
...a poem by George Herbert to Hesiod's Works and Days and Hawthorne's story of Pandora in his Wonder-Book.
1/8: making
...jelly donut cake with Chris and, while it was baking, writing a business-y email I had been putting off.
1/7: 2 things
From the morning: While eating breakfast, I watched a video of Mary Beard's lecture for the Friends of the Bodleian. A former student had sent me the link. It was about the representation of libraries as places of danger and mystery (in, for example, fiction).
From the evening: When I went to post this week's Heron Tree poem, the site wasn't accessible because the security certification installation process got stalled. Needless to say, that wasn't good. But after a freak-out / melt-down, I contacted the folks at DreamHost, and it got sorted out. The relative quickness of the sorting-out was good.
1/6: writing thank-you cards
...for holiday gifts. Since today is the Epiphany (the "end" of the Christmas season), it seemed a fitting way to mark the close.
1/5: oregano
...on the pizza at the new-to-us pizza place we tried at lunchtime! I love oregano on pizza because it's what I grew up with--it was pretty much standard on pizza in western Pennsylvania. But here in Arkansas oregano on pizza is rare, and a lot of places don't even have oregano on hand when I ask for it specially, so I've stopped hoping for it. Which made today's unasked-for oregano a happy surprise.
1/4: less busy
...at the grocery store this morning. I'm glad I decided not to go yesterday afternoon.
1/3: getting to it
I need to make copies of old pamphlets for an upcoming exhibit, and the prospect has been difficult for me to face. Not because making the pamphlets is hard, but because the exhibit context is so different from my usual m.o., and that's thrown me for more of a psychological loop than I anticipated. This evening I finally got started, and I'm hoping to finish tomorrow.
1/2: morning, afternoon, evening
Morning: talking with Chris about The Great Gatsby.
Afternoon: walking solo in the cool grey day.
Evening: collaging with Chris.
1/1: a walk
...in the woods at Woolly Hollow. We wanted to end at Gold Creek, but the creek-bed was dry. Still, the light and air were good, and other people were enjoying time outdoors too.
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