Spring 2021 Grading: DONE!

30 April 2021: Just submitted my last grades for this semester. Thus endeth the strangest academic year of my life. I don't want to think too much about the work ahead of me right now. Instead, this calls for a bit of chair dancing to the tune of this bop that Hannah introduced me to earlier this week.

   

Cute distractions...

29 April 2021: When you are trying to work from home but the residents of Dr. Hanrahan's Home for Geriatric Cats have other ideas. And make no mistake about it: their age makes this much more manipulative. And when they team up? Very hard to resist. (But I did.) 

Peeking through...

28 April 2021: The cherry tree blossoms are done and dogwoods and redbuds are winding down, but now it's lilac time. The past few mornings on my walks, when I get to Rumsey Park, I've smelled the lilacs on the hillside by the river before I see them. But there they are, popping out of the thicket. I actually like that I smell them first--a reminder of what's to come. And I actually like that they're a bit hard to spot in the brush, another reminder that some beautiful things are a bit harder to see, but still there. 

"Somewhere Only We Know"

27 April 2021: 

"I came across a fallen tree

I felt the branches of it looking at me

Is this the place we used to love?

Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?"

It's been a pretty good day: gorgeous weather that made it feel like summer, lots of items checked off the to-do list. But still lots of room for Big Thoughts and conversations with myself. Partial blame goes to an episode of Mark and Sarah Talk about Songs, which has had me thinking about this song--and this passage in particular--all day. 

A little bit of everything...

26 April 2021: Little bit of everything today: grading, course prep for the summer, committee work, conferences with students, a college meeting, and even a bit of research/writing stuff. The highlight might have been those student conferences, both with ENGL 204 students who wanted to talk about their final exams. It still gets to me sometimes how much fun it is to talk with students about their writing and help them see the smart ideas they've got in their heads. One guy, for instance, is writing about four poems whose concision and diction opens up meanings for readers. Such a delight to talk to non-majors about this stuff. 

"The blues have always had me too..."

25 April 2021: Still digging Brandi's memoir so much. I find myself relating to so much of what she says about family, work, religion, love, figuring out who you are...just everything. And then there are these insights on her songs, like this one. I've always liked it, but hearing her talk about it made it speak to me in a new way. Perfect soundtrack to a Big Thoughts Sunday. 

Every once in a while...

24 April 2021: Every once in a while Veronica jumps up on the ottoman and it's not about begging for food. She did it today while I was grading. Cue a long stretch of me trying to be cool and not make any sudden movements. She stuck around until she heard Bing in the kitchen. As always, she's way more into him than she is into me. And so it goes...

Promising Young Woman

23 April 2021: In a bit of post-vaccine normalcy, Hannah came over after work today and we got dinner and watched Promising Young Woman, a heck of a movie that I'll have to think about a lot in the coming days. After it was over, we sat and talked for hours. Lovely to recognize "normal" more and more. 

Never do the math...

22 April 2021: "Never do the math," I always tell myself when I think about what's left to grade each semester. But I always end up doing the math anyway. I ran the numbers today and boy, does it seem manageable right now, helped by:

• Good planning (spacing things out) 
• Smaller than usual classes, a consequence of COVID room restrictions and weird scheduling
• Only teaching three of them, thanks to my course release for Senate). 

Here's what's left:

ENGL 406 Critical Essays (12-15 pages each): 5 of these (got one done early!), coming in tomorrow

ENGL 204 Final Exams (essays and short answer): 12 of these, coming in on Wednesday

ENGL 301 Final Exams (essays and short answer): 8 of these, coming in on Monday

ENGL 406 Presentation Grades: 6 of these; quick and easy; a week from tomorrow

So this math makes me feel pretty good, which I appreciate since the math involved in "what I've got to get done once the semester ends" is a bit terrifying...

Broken Horses

21 April 2021: Started listening to Brandi Carlile's new book last night and again this morning while on my walk. I opted for the audiobook since she includes 30+ songs with it. Today has been a long and stressful day--where each email or call that came in almost made me laugh because I was so overwhelmed--but starting my day with this book no doubt helped me get through it.  

I am especially enjoying learning that Brandi was a serious and weird little kid. I love weird little kids and I think I was myself, a very serious kid, at least inwardly. It's strangely comforting to know there are more of us "I was a weird and serious little kid" folks out there. 

A bit of justice...

20 April 2021: Relieved to see George Floyd's killer convicted. Sad for what the world lost and what it took to get there. Hopeful for some change on the horizon, but certain there is so far (too far) to go.

Sorrow and Bliss

19 April 2021: It's hard to put into words exactly why, but I didn't sleep well last night, feeling tense and anxious. That put me in not the best mood all day. And it was a long day, complete with a 2.5+ hour Faculty Senate meeting.

When I got home, it was still lovely out, so I took my book, Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss, outside onto the back deck and finished the last few pages. Just that 30 minutes of pausing and doing something fun did helped me relax. Not quite sorrow and not quite bliss, but a good way to segue from "ugh" to "that's better."

The book itself really grabbed me. It's a funny and moving story of a woman's experience with mental illness, family, love, and moving forward when you've made mistakes. I found the narrator's voice particularly powerful. I was also struck by how compassionate the book was, surprising me with those turns. 

Mamma Mia

18 April 2021: Went to Program Board's drive-in movie screening of Mamma Mia. Still a delightful, fun, and silly movie.

Here I go again, indeed...

Accepted Students Day 2021

17 April 2021: Excited to bust out this bit of bling for the first time in over a year, welcoming new Rams for our in-person (and safe) Accepted Students Day.

Live theater!

16 April 2021: Had my first live theater experience since COVID attending the Rude Mechanicals' production of two English majors' plays. The seating was socially-distanced, the audience and the actors wore masks, but for the most part, it felt like the good kind of normal. 

Almost certain...

15 April 2021: I am 95% certain that I am about to start on a very big scholarly project. Yet these past few weeks, I have felt so overwhelmingly busy that it's hard to imagine how those two things can go together.  So...that's where that 5% of uncertainty is coming from.

I'll figure it all out, but sometimes it helps to just say (write) it out, I guess. Lots to figure out, but I can do it.

Update: sent the "yes" email. Here we go...

"Allison Road"

14 April 2021: Another long and kind of stressful day. Home now, getting some more work done until I start to crash, and this time-warp of a song lifted my spirits. I love it as much as I did when I was in high school.

Inventory

13 April 2021: Felt overwhelmed for a lot of today. Swamped with trying to address everything from grading to class prep to research projects to WV's evil bill attacking transgender people. 

As I sit here tonight, I am making myself do an inventory of the good parts of the day:

1) My walk while listening to one of my favorite podcasts.

2) My cats, who refuse to let me feel alone. They literally force me to pet them or look at them. It's gets me out of my head and makes me grateful. 

3) That redbud still doing its thing and stopping me in my tracks.

4) The really good soup I made for dinner (that will also be tomorrow's lunch and dinner).

Deep breaths. On we go. 

17 years of Wes...

 12 April 2021: Happy 17th to Wes! He's got his paw on my shoulder here, something he does regularly and Exhibit A in my case that he's the sweetest boy.

Suburban dad mode...

11 April 2021: On this perfect spring day (weather-wise), I had my first "suburban dad proud of his lawn" moment of the season. That moment when I sort of slow down and smile, surveying its loveliness. It's so corny, but I just can't help it. Even though it was the second cut, this time I felt better about handling the new mower, had dropped the blade down, and the lawn overall is lusher and fuller. (It's also really weedy, but I don't care about that part.)

I was also thinking today about how this year has marked some replacement equipment purchases. New car, new lawnmower, and (just ordered today), a new edger. The old car was one year older than the mower and edger, but all three really earned their keep for over a decade. And I guess that feels right? Over 10 years in this house (moved in July 2009)! 

Even that tree out back, which started as a tiny twig from a friend, bears witness to a decade-plus of growth and change. 

Redbud 2021

10 April 2021: Each year, this tree outdoes itself.

Farewell, Wynonna Earp!

9 April 2021: The final episode of Wynonna Earp airs tonight and I going to miss this weird, funny, silly, and moving show. It has been such a delight for four seasons and though I would have loved more, it feels amazing to have gotten this much of it. A smart, funny, sexy, female-driven, queer-friendly, sci-fi/fantasy/(Canadian) Western with a positively lovely fanbase? It's almost miraculous. (Actually, the fan-base part isn't surprising at all if you pay attention to the descriptors I list in the beginning.)

"What is left? What remains? Ephemera remain."

8 April 2021: "I have been making a case for a hermeneutics of residue that looks to understand the wake of performance. What is left? What remains? Ephemera remain. They are absent and they are present, disrupting a predictable metaphysics of presence. The actual act is only a stage in the game; it is a moment, pure and simple. There is a deductive element to performance that has everything to do with its conditions of possibility, and there is much that follows....This command to write is a command to save the ephemeral thing by committing it to memory, to word, to language. The poet instructs us to retain the last thing through a documentation of our loss, a retelling of our relationship to it" (Muñoz 71).

Still working my way through and really enjoying Cruising Utopia. This analysis of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," one of my favorite poems, just knocked me out. 

Work Cited

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York UP, 2009. 

Centering

7 April 2021: Busy day, with some really low points and really high points. Points of absolute frustration mixed with moments of break-through. Thinking lots of Big Thoughts about just about Big Topic. It's a bit overwhelming. Grateful for the beauty of spring all around me for a sense of centering and the good kind of feeling small.

"A photograph"

6 April 2021: Came across this James Schuyler poem in José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia today and really found myself moved and charmed by it.

“A photograph”

Shows you in a London 

room; books, a painting,

your smile, a silky

tie, a suit. And more. 

It looks so like you 

and I see it every day 

(here, on my desk) 

which I don’t you. Last 

Friday was grand. 

We went out, we came 

back, we went wild. You 

slept. Me too. The pup 

woke you and you dressed 

and walked him. When 

you left, I was sleeping. 

When I woke there was 

just time to make the 

train to a country dinner

and talk about ecstasy. 

Which I think comes in 

two sorts: that which you 

Know “Now I am ecstatic” 

Like my strange scream 

last Friday night. And 

another kind, that you 

know only in retrospect: 

“Why, that joy I felt 

and didn’t think about 

when his feet were in 

my lap, or when I looked 

down and saw his slanty

eyes shut, that too was 

ecstasy. Nor is there 

necessarily a downer from 

it.” Do I believe in 

the perfectibility of 

man? Strangely enough, 

(I’ve known un-

happiness enough) I 

do. I mean it. 

I really do believe 

future generations can 

live without the in-

tervals of anxious 

fear we know between our 

bouts and strolls of 

ecstasy. The struck ball 

finds the pocket. You 

smile some years back

 in London, I have 

known ecstasy and calm: 

haven’t you too? Let’s 

try to understand, my 

handsome friend who 

wears his nose awry.

"the lady in red when everybody else is wearing tan!"

5 April 2021: What a delight to jump back into old episode of The Nanny on HBO Max! It's like being transported back to the 90s (in a good way). And the jokes hold up. So strange to find myself thinking over these past few days, "Maybe watch another episode of The Nanny?" 

Easter 2021

4 April 2021: So grateful for a vaccine that made it safe to visit with the McNetts. 

Poem for an early spring day...

 3 April 2021: 

"Instructions on Not Giving Up"
Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Favorite tree...

2 April 2021: Favorite tree on campus doing it's thing... 

(Picture from Shepherd's FB page.)

Opening day...

1 April 2021: Today feels a bit brighter (emotionally) than yesterday, even if the weather has turned colder. Some more signs of spring: I just got back from a trip to Lowe's where I picked up a new mower (!) and now I am watching the Yankees play the Blue Jays. (Still not sure if the latter should be happening--COVID is still here--but I can't help but watch.)