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.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)