Awards are nice...

30 April 2018: ...but good friends are better. Specifically these two friends, who nominated me for the award I received today. I am very blessed.

Howards End

29 April 2018: "Can't it strike you even for a moment that your life has been heroic?" --Helen to Margaret, at the close of Howards End.

I will confess to not having read Forster's novel (and now I really want to), but I finished watching the new mini-series this morning and loved it. The line quoted above brought tears to my eyes, reminding me a bit of Eliot's thoughts about quiet heroism in Middlemarch. 

That semester-break life...

28 April 2018: Got a lot done today: got my hair cut, took a trip the grocery store, ran some other errands, mowed the lawn, washed the car (inside and out), hung a new window shade in the bathroom, started working on a grant, and took a walk with Amy and Vosco. And it's not yet 5:30. Whew! Off to dinner with friends soon and then checking out new episodes of The Handmaid's Tale tonight. Starting this break off right!

Soundtrack for the day: this tune I hadn't heard in years before it jumped back on my radar a few days ago.

Spring 2018 Grading: DONE!

27 April 2018: This might be a new record for me--done before noon on the Friday of exam week. I have no idea how it happened, but I sure ain't complaining. Here's to Summer 2018, which I have resolved to make fun, silly, and relaxing!

Chair-dancing time...

Flowers...

26 April 2018: My family and friends have been so kind to me since the news about my promotion. My house is currently full of flowers, which makes me very happy.

From Chris, Jen, Kelsie, and Aidan. 

 From Tara, Jeff, Olivia, and Colin.

From Hannah.

20 years ago?

25 April 2018:

"So today I finally find the courage deep inside
Just to walk right up to your door
But my body can't move when I finally get to it
Like a thousand times before
Then without a word you handed me this letter
Read I hope this finds the way into your heart, it said

I love you
Please say you love me too
'Til the end of time" --Faith Hill, "I Love You"

I have always really liked this song--its retro-sound, its big old vocal delivered by Faith, and most of all, the very sweet story it tells. It's been in my head today.

Just now, I realized I first heard it in the spring of 1998. (In fact, Wikipedia tells me the album--entitled Faith--was released on April 21, 1998.) That's twenty years ago. Wow. I remember so much of that spring and summer and so many of those memories are set to that album. It was, among other things, the summer before my senior year of college (terrifying and thrilling), when I did independent "grad-school level" research for the first time as a "Summer Scholar," when I lived on the Elizabeth Campus with my best friends and we felt like we had the whole campus to ourselves and kind of practiced for our first apartments, when I turned 21, when my sister got married... Lots of change and big thinking and the feeling of being on the cusp of new things. Again: scary and exciting.

Twenty years later. How much has changed? What remains the same? Hmmm...

One good thing from today...

24 April 2018: Just hit "submit" on an article revision. Still feels pretty darn good to do that, especially when you have a project you really like. Who knows what will happen with this article, but now that the last promotion is in the books and the stakes are in some ways much lighter, it's easier to send these things off.

Time for a bit of chair-dancing...

Two good things from yesterday...

1) My favorite tree in the backyard is blooming and 2) I learned that I am being promoted to full professor.

"If All My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is"

23 April 2018: Blown away this morning by this poem from Patrick Rosal. Here's what he said about it, courtesy of the little blurb from the "Poem-a-Day" email: "I guess it is a kind of failure not to learn how to love and be loved, but I also think it’s a kind of love to bear witness to love itself: to pay attention to it, especially in unlikely places and forms, to record it, to struggle to write love down so that it changes me. In that way, I feel an incredible sense of wealth."

Sometimes I think it is easy (too easy) to get caught up in what I don't have, but poems like this remind us that witnessing love is a kind of gift and a way of loving.

Spring returns? I'm feeling it...

22 April 2018:

"Something happens and I'm head over heels
I never find out till I'm head over heels
Something happens and I'm head over heels
Ah don't take my heart, don't break my heart
Don't don't don't throw it away" --Tears for Fears, "Head Over Heels"

A lovely Sunday so far; grading in the morning, mowed the lawn; took a good walk; had a birthday dinner for a good friend. And in a bit, I'll head out to Midnight Breakfast. Seems like it's a good time to be optimistic again.

"Unrest in Baton Rouge"

21 April 2018:

"Is it strange to say love is a language
Few practice, but all, or near all speak?" --Tracy K. Smith, "Unrest in Baton Rouge"

Came across this poem and the story behind it on a Studio 360 episode today. Amazing.

"But what if there are 10 babies on the floor of the Senate?"

20 April 2018: "We could only wish we had 10 babies on the floor. That would be a delight." --Amy Klobuchar, in response to Senator Hatch's hypothetical question.

Go Tammy Duckworth! More babies in the Senate! (The real kind, not adults acting like babies...)

Welcome words...

19 April 2018: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." --1 Peter 5: 6-7

"Improvisation on Them"

18 April 2018:

I like this quite a bit:

"A beautiful loser, she takes pleasure in being incomplete.
He draws tears from grown men when he plucks his box.
She is reckless, never trained, so much a wound clock.
They move like movement in a still life picture.
She sings behind the beat and leans into the future.
Stepping out of sequence as though they’ve just begun."

Read the whole thing here.

This poem came to me from the Academy of American Poets' "Poem-a-Day" email, which also included this commentary from the poet, Linda Susan Jackson: "I was listening to Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favorite Things,’ and I began to imagine that like great musicians, we improvise—in relationships, through life, and in our writing. Time goes by, the writing goes on; we take risks, and, hopefully, we can recover from our mistakes. We start again, making it all seem effortless yet remarkable at the same time. At least, what I want this poem to suggest is that moments of improvisation can hold all the meaning, memory, and music, as well as a little magic.”

Love it.

Never peaking...

17 April 2018: This thread from my imaginary best buddy Linda Holmes really speaks to me. Give it a read!

April is the cruelest month...we know, we know...

16 April 2018: You know, even as I was typing my “What a great day this has been!” post the other day, I worried if I was jinxing myself. And while the two days since then haven’t been awful, they haven’t been all that great, either. Nothing too bad, really—just kind of frustrating and disappointing. The fact that it’s about 40 degrees colder and rainy hasn’t helped either.

But something that helped? An evening walk around campus with Amy and Vosco. He goes to his next stop in the training process soon (the end of the month), so even that has a touch of bittersweet to it. Still it helped me get into a slightly better mood and I am grateful for that.

Not so fast...

15 April 2018: That taste of spring didn't last too long as the temperature dropped quickly today and clouds dominated. Sigh. But there were some symbolic bright spots, as I got some work done on an article, we initiated new members into Sigma Tau Delta, and our seniors gave their capstone presentations.

Finally...a taste of spring...

14 April 2018: After a restful sleep, woke up this morning to birds singing, breezes coming through the open window, and two snuggle-y cats. (BabyCat on the floor outside in the doorway, as usual.) What a way to open an all-around lovely day. Mowed the lawn (for the first time this season), saw a movie, got some grading done, did some chores, went to a poetry reading, had a good dinner out, talked about plans for the summer... Days like this--quiet, lovely, spent with people I love--I just savor them...

"And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark..."

Wes at 14

This handsome fellow turned 14 on Thursday. Still acts and sounds like a kitten.

"Days"

13 April 2018:

"What are days for?
Days are where we live. 
They come, they wake us 
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in: 
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor 
In their long coats
Running over the fields." --Philip Larkin, "Days"

A friend posted this poem this morning and it immediately drew me away from what I was supposed to be doing (grading...). Like so many initial responses to poetry, I suppose your reaction the tone of its two stanzas reflects a lot about where you are in your life and how you feel about that. These days, I find myself embracing the "They are to be happy in" part and chuckling a bit over the doctors and priests in "their long coats."

Rainy morning reading and grading...

12 April 2018:

"To miss you, Sue,
is power.
The stimulus
of Loss makes
most Possession
mean.
To live lasts
always, but to
love is firmer
than to live.
No Heart that
broke but further
went than
Immortality" --Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, around 1870 or so

"The Legacy of Childhood Trauma"

11 April 2018: When I posted my first Díaz-related status this week, I hadn't yet had the chance to read this piece in The New Yorker. Well, I finished it this morning and it's so incredibly powerful: sad, moving, and (maybe?) ultimately a bit hopeful.

More Oscar Wao appreciation...

10 April 2018: "I know I've thrown a lot of fantasy and sci-fi into the mix but this is supposed to be a true account of the Brief Wondrous Life of Osacar Wao. Can't we believe that an Ybón can exist and that a brother like Oscar might be due a little luck after twenty-three years?" --Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Two posts in a row on this book, I know...and I know it's not a big swing--this book is awesome and everyone knows it. But every time I get to the ending, I just cry and smile and swoon and all that. And every time I read the passage above, I nod my head in agreement with what I wrote in the margins on my first read: "Yes." Yes, we can believe it, no matter how foolish it might be, no matter how much the world tries to tell us otherwise.

Back to Oscar Wao...

9 April 2018: "It's in the future past..." --a student in my ENGL 360 class discussing the way that Junot Díaz plays with our conceptions of time in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Now I know that comment appears to make little sense to people who haven't read the book, but all of us knew exactly what she meant.

I always love returning to this text and teaching it. And in a semester/year (decade?) where I have been thinking some big thoughts, I am continually grateful for the novel's assertion that sometimes "The only way out is in..."

Brain Games...

8 April 2018: No one else I'd rather have as a co-judge at this year's Brain Games fundraiser for Literacy Volunteers of the Eastern Panhandle. (Even if she can never resist doing finger guns in a picture.) Our third year in a row...

Conversations with myself, Part II

7 April 2018: Today I've been thinking about this post from last month and, connected to it, this larger question of how I am spending my time this year. Something has changed--something small in some ways--but meaningful, I think. Simply put, these days, I find myself doing what I want to do more and not feeling bad about it.

Since college, I guess, I just pushed myself to keep going, keep working, keep saying yes. And it was easy because I loved it and I still love my work so much. (And as always, I realize what an incredible blessing this is.) I haven't been hugely successful by any definition of the word, but I've done okay (and lucky as heck) and it's been so rewarding and wonderful. My life is good.

But maybe it really is something about applying for full professor (the last (ever?) big push in terms of a promotion), turning 40, losing my friend Shannon, and just deciding that it was okay to be a bit self-focused and enjoy life more. Like the nerdiest (and therefore most "me") midlife [non]-crisis ever. And that's meant seemingly silly things like having entire evenings or weekend days where no work gets done. Or leaving the office some days as soon as my office hours are over to go for a long walk. (I practically skipped to my car yesterday at 3:00.) Or seeing two movies in a weekend. Or not stressing about passing on an event on campus.

Today has been a good day: got some work done this morning, did a bit of cleaning, then saw a movie and went for a walk with Amy, and hung out with Anna and Josh in the evening. I'll spend a big chunk of tomorrow volunteering as a judge at a trivia tournament that raises money for a local literacy program. At some point today, I realized that I am probably not going to get that stack of papers that I collected yesterday graded by Monday (thus the thinking about this post). And once again, I realized that's fine..

If this is 40 for me, I am (gradually becoming) okay with that.

Scenes from a campus walk...

6 April 2018: I mean, cats are still the official animal of my life, but this dog and baby combo is pretty darn cute.

“Child Sexual Abuse: A Community Panel Discussion”

5 April 2018: This event will stick with me a long time. The five women on the panel are amazing, doing such important work every day.

An unexpected gift...

4 April 2018:

Today a student dropped off a gift she picked up for me (it was at a "free" table at the library). Her kindness made my day.

Great (Dating) Expectations...

3 April 2018: Today we finished up our discussion of Great Expectations in ENGL 311. As usual, the class had lots of smart things to say as we wrestled with the strange (and plural!) endings of this book. I asked them what they thought of (spoiler?) Biddy marrying Joe and joked that, "hey, he's got a job and he's nice." Somehow that got us talking about who we would date from the book (lots of "anyone but Pip!" responses...poor Pip!).

Half joking, half serious, I wondered aloud if that might make a good final exam essay prompt--something about having them write about which character (or writer?) from over the course of the semester would be a good spouse/match. It's certainly a different kind of prompt, but one that can trick them into doing some actual critical thinking. And, as someone who does a lot of exam grading, something fun might be more, well...fun to grade. I have to think about it some more, but the class liked the idea. We shall see...

"Don't Worry Baby"

2 April 2018:

"Well its been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
I don't know why
But I keep thinking
Something's bound to go wrong
But she looks in my eyes

And makes me realize
And she says 'Don't worry baby'
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out alright" --The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby"

A day that started with snow ended on quite a lovely note. This song, which came on as I was making dinner, fit the mood pretty nicely.

Easter 2018

1 April 2018: Once again, I got to spend Easter with Erin, Eric, Krista, and Isla: a wonderful way to spend the day.