2/28: the magnolias

...on campus beginning to bloom.  A happy sight as I walked between buildings in the afternoon.

2/27: being able

...to clear the evening of other work so I could read Daphnis and Chloe for a book discussion group tomorrow afternoon.  It's been almost seven years since the last time I read it, and it was good to revisit it with different eyes.

2/26: trees beginning

...to blossom.

2/25: characters as setting

Students wrote discussion questions for class today, and one student asked how character and setting each contribute to tone in today's reading assignment.  Another student suggested that the characters and their interactions themselves become a setting.  It was a good moment.

2/24: listening

...to the last installment of Michael Butt's BBC adaptation of In Search of Lost Time.  So well done, and I'm grateful for two sunny days this weekend so I could walk and listen.

2/23: martinis

...at dinner, made expertly by Chris.

2/22: good omen

An eagle flew on my right on my drive to school this morning, and it turned out to be a good day (despite the fact that I left the house thinking that it wouldn't).

2/21: among

...the frustration of a broken computer in my school office and bureaucratic vexations, I am grateful for some good things:

Putting together ancient and modern images related to the Odyssey that "talk" to one another in very clear yet interesting ways.

Listening to Heap House!!

Charting ways in which Rick Riordan uses ancient sources in The Sea of Monsters.  I have not given him enough credit in the past for doing some really thoughtful adaptation work.

Reading Sarah Moss' Ghost Wall.