every day, one good thing

Wearing a new dress lifted my mood today. It's flowy and light with autumn colours; it made me want to swirl all day. And I wore it with tights, which reminded me of being little and wearing dresses and tights a lot.

10/6: activity

We've read a good number of poems in the Martial class already this semester, and I wanted to think of a way for the students to review them and see patterns among them. So I typed up a bunch of slips: one for each poem we've read, giving the poem's first line and leaving room for a student to write some notes about the poem. Each student then got their own set of slips for all the poems we've read so far and sat quietly, grouping the slips according to similarities of whatever sort they saw among the poems. Then we shared our favorite groupings. I don't think I'm explaining it well here, but I liked it a lot as an activity!

10/5: first wednesday

...of the month, and that meant an evening phone conversation with my sister.

10/4: late but done

I worked longer than I was fresh for, but my to-do list for the evening got finished.

10/3: unexpected visitor

A former student--whom I never actually taught but did a lot of co-curricular activities with--was in town briefly today and stopped by for a quick hello and a hug.

10/2: a chapter title

This evening I was working on a gloss for one of the chapter titles in Trollope's Three Clerks. It's an allusion to a satire by Horace, and Trollope uses it so well, partly turning it on its head, partly getting us to re-interpret an earlier moment in the novel--all in all, what a pleasure to think about.

10/1: a sighting

I saw this sweetie in the woods at Woolly Hollow in the afternoon:

Turns out, it's slender ladies' tresses (a kind of orchid), but unopened. Chris showed me some opened ones in our own woods not too long ago.