"i" before "e," but we still worry...

22 October 2025: I gave my ENGL 204 a very simple reading quiz on the two Robert Frost poems we discussed today. 

Two questions, one per poem, each answered with just one word. Should have required minimum writing, erasing, and rewriting. 

But as I looked around, I saw some folks doing just that--erasing, crossing out, etc.

"Wait, is this about spelling the answer to #2?" 

It sure was.

Question #2 was, I must report, about "Mending Wall."

I get it; when the pressure is on, I doubt my ability to spell so many things. 

When We All Get to Heaven

21 October 2025: I am only one regular episode (and one bonus episode) into this series, but my goodness, it is powerful and moving. It is also, I suspect, precisely the kind of history we need to be reminded of right now.

Three-week marathon...

20 October 2025: Kicking off what is kind of a three-week marathon (maybe closer to four), packed with extra appointments, extra meetings and workshops, extra trivia shifts, two field trips, advising, and the start of me picking up my section of the GWST course...along with SSAWW in Philadelphia. 

A lot of the "extra" stuff is fun and meaningful, so I am not complaining (too much). But I see it all coming and it's tiring me out in advance. 

But I can do it. And will focus on the fun and meaningful parts. And will still find time for rest and quiet. 

The Black Phone 2

19 October 2025: I really liked Black Phone when it premiered, finding myself especially affected by the way it portrayed violence against children, making viewers sit through "ordinary" horrors of parental abuse even as those same children were preyed on by a serial killer. I rewatched it a few weeks ago and found myself tearing up just as I had the first time at the scenes where the children's father beats little Gwen because of her dreams. 

The Black Phone 2 removes those domestic spaces, but is still incredibly violent  while avoiding being gratuitous. I'm still thinking about that scene change and what it accomplishes. I think it might be a less complicated film than the original, but more aesthetically ambitious. It's a visually beautiful film at times, with chilling (pun intended) and haunting images. 

I think there's a lot that could be written about it, including its commentary on the ordinary violence of the 70s and 80s in the life of children. Lord knows, today's kids have their own version of violence, but there's something distinct about what these films capture. 

Hope, joy, and protest...

18 October 2025: I couldn't take part in the No Kings Protest here in town (where over 2000 people showed up!) because I was accompanying a group of my students to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival today. They got to listen to Maureen Corrigan deliver a heck of a talk on Gatsby and got to meet Percival Everett. Everett told us, "These are hard times," but reminded us that "the most subversive thing you can do is read." 

Spending time with these students--who love reading, literature, thinking, and the world so much--gives me hope and reminds me that opposition movements need hope and joy.

Fall Break Friday...

17 October 2024: Checked some big items off of my Fall Break To-Do List, which always feels good. Tonight it's off to see Jay Johnson at the casino in Charles Town. Amy (accidentally?) got tickets for the second show which starts at 9:30. That's very funny for someone like her who likes to be in bed by 9:00. Anyway, should be a fun night. 

Last blooms...

16 October 2025: The zinnias are pretty much done for the year, especially the big ones by the mailbox. I pulled them out this morning, which is always a bit sad. I clipped the last blooms that hadn't started fading, a last gift of summer brought in just before the frost that's expected tonight.

Fall Break!

15 October 2025: I've got work to do, but I am grateful that we've made it to Fall Break. Catching my breath, getting some rest, getting some little projects done. It all sounds good to me.

You don't know until you are there...

14 October 2025: Spent a lot of today revisiting and chopping down my SSAWW paper. I finished a decent draft over the summer, but then set it aside until today. (I had planned for 20 minutes, but I am on a panel of four, so I needed to chop, chop, chop.)

Last weekend, I sent the session chair the information he requested, including an abstract. 

Reading the paper today, I realized that abstract doesn't really fit the paper. It's too broad, too generic. It doesn't say what the paper is actually about. But of course that's because I wrote it before I wrote the essay. 

So, I just emailed him with a new version.

This is a good lesson for my students: you shouldn't waste too much time on introductions or an exact thesis early on. You don't know what you are going to argue until you make the argument. Then you revise, revise, revise.

Feeling pretty good about it, but it is a weird little essay. 

Never fails me...

13 October 2025: Since I first read it in eleventh grade and it forever changed the way I felt about what a novel could do, The Scarlet Letter has never failed me. Today, in a tag-team operation with my students, it delivered 50 minutes of the absolute joy that is being in the classroom. My eyes still feel puffy and my head still feels stuffy from yesterday's tears, but I feel more restored and renewed. 

Good Boy

12 October 2025: Was not expecting an indie horror movie to send me into tears that haven't entirely stopped hours after I saw it. 

To be clear, Good Boy is a heck of a movie (and only 73 minutes!). But the plot (spoilers) involving a beloved dog watching his owner, a haunted and sick man, take his own life, with his sister finding the body...well, when I saw that was where it going, the tears just started. 

I felt it in my whole body. Even as I write this six hours later, I am crying a bit. 

Ryan would have turned 51 this past Thursday. 

He's been gone for over a decade. 

Most days, as I've written about, the good memories ride side-by-side with the bad. 

It's been a long time since the grief has hit me like this. So raw and just so sad. My mind is going to the saddest places--thinking about that last day and the aftermath. 

It's humbling. You think you are past it, but no.

I felt bad about being so upset and bumming out poor Amy. When I dropped her off, I said I was sorry again. Then I realized she's such a decent person and that she was more concerned than someone who need an apology. So I said, "It's okay. It's a good thing to grieve." 

I think I was thinking about this passage from Amy Tan's book that I posted about last week. 

Have had a bit of a headache and jaw ache from the emotion of it all day, but at one point, I laid down on my bed and listened to "Better Together," to think about Ryan and Sugie. And me and Jo and BabyCat. I cried some more. 

It's a good thing to grieve and remember that it comes from love. And that love goes on. 

Skipping it...

11 October 2025: Decided to skip a work-related event today and, oh my goodness, it feels so good. This Saturday is about 100 times better than it would have been if I had gone. Chilling with the girls, watching some TV, cleaning the house, and getting some other work done. It rocks. 

Good to remember Project Balance.

"You need me, I need you..."

10 October 2025: "There’s something about loving someone else and taking care of someone that makes the hierarchy of the world feel much smaller and more focused—and I do take everything so seriously and I am so engaged—but there’s a relief in coming home and saying, ‘You need me, I need you. Let’s lean in together.’" --Zach Sanders on this week's episode of Vibe Check, talking about his life now that he's adopted a dog. 

Listened to this on my walk this morning and couldn't agree with the sentiment more. It sums up how I feel about having Veronica and Jo in my life. 

Multitudes...

9 October 2025: The midterm exam prompt that gives me the most joy semester after semester in ENGL 204 is when I ask them to talk about a text that connects to something in their lives outside of the classroom. Here's some gold from an exam I graded today, where a student talks about "Song of Myself" and "contain[ing] multitudes": 

"Sometimes I feel like I can never pin down an idea of who I am to people, but I am large so of course it would be hard to put me in just one box." 

Looking out for me since 1999...

8 October 2025: I had a long overdue catch-up session with my dear friend Gretchen today. This was ostensibly to discuss me taking over for her as an assistant editor at Studies in American Humor. 

This is a few year after I took over for her as a contributing editor there. 

And over a decade since she helped me publish an article in a special issue she edited. 

And over 26 years after I met her in the very first graduate class I took back in 1999. 

She was much further along in her graduate work then--already a Ph.D. student, almost done with her coursework. I was 22 and...terrified? 

She was kind to me and looked out for me and has been there for me ever since. A friendship like that is a gift like none other.