"Wide Net"

30 July 2023: Re-watching the second season of Reservation Dogs to prepare for season three starting this week. It's just so perfect. Today I found myself appreciating "Wide Net," where the aunties go to a conference, all over again. Just the confidence and love that it takes to turn our perspective fully onto them--and nail it. 

Barbie

29 July 2023: Well, believe the hype: Barbie was so much fun. Very sweet, too. I got choked up a couple of times (though I am an easy movie cry). Went to see it today with Amy, who is back after three weeks in Africa. Low-key delayed birthday celebration for her, too, with dinner after. 

"Tom Sawyerish..."

28 July 2023: “One of my prized boyhood possessions was a metal Band-Aid box containing teeth which I had extracted from a raccoon skull that I found by the side of the road—if that isn’t Tom Sawyerish, I don’t know what is” (Hawley 133).

I got a kick out of this charming piece by Timothy Hawley in which he reflects on his life-long love of Twain and his work printing editions of his writings.

Work Cited

Hawley, Timothy. “From Mark Twain Fanatic to Mark Twain Pirate Publisher.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 133–52.

A classic for a reason...

27 July 2023: "The frequency with which derangement follows loss of virtue suggests the exquisite sensibility of woman, and the possibility that, in the women's magazines at least, her intellect was geared to her hymen, not her brain" (Welter 156).

I hadn't actually read all of Welter's foundational essay until today. My goodness--what fun she's having. 

Work Cited

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, 1966, pp. 151–74. JSTOR.

Your Name Means Dream

26 July 2023: Really enjoyed seeing this CATF play with Carrie and Rachael this evening. Terrific acting and a really interesting script. 

Nine years...

25 July 2023: 

Chose this picture because I am pretty sure this is from a period of time when our relationship was at its most contentious (at least during childhood). He was my chief tormentor--so merciless at times. (Of course, I know annoyed the hell out of him, though unintentionally, for the most part.) 

I look at it now and see a little boy, already wrestling with challenges. 

But look at him here: so cool, performing a bit, and so darn cute. It's a kind of gift to be able to look back and see these images again, through the eyes of someone older. 

Sometimes the pain of it all--his struggles, the chances lost, the long, sad decline--still hits like the biggest, saddest gut punch. But lately, at least most days, the sadness rides alongside gratitude for having known, loved him, and remembering him.  

My girls...

24 July 2023: Long day with a lot accomplished (on so many different fronts) but still a bit more on my to-do list. My inbox is tamed, for the moment, but its contents have been...let's say unsettling and fraught. I still wake up every morning thinking about all I need to get done and drift off to sleep fighting to urge to count some more. And so it goes.

But right now--at this very moment--just focusing on two sources of light and joy. 

First, Veronica, looking out the window after a little rain storm moved through. I look at her now and am so grateful she's here and healthy given everything she went through earlier this summer.

Second, Jo, currently batting a tiny ball of paper all over the house. (Her absolute favorite toys these days are crumpled up papers). She brings it back to me every once in a while and I throw it as far as I can and off she goes.

So grateful for them both.

There's just something about Twain scholars...

23 July 2023: "Barbara Snavely’s father sneered, and maybe even snickered. ‘Come back when you own a wood mill as large and successful as mine,’ snorted Snavely snidely to the twenty-one-year-old suitor. Lick, snubbed and in a snit, and who was not one to snivel in response to snootiness, instead snapped at Snavely, snarling that he would someday build a mill that would make Snively’s Stumpstown mill ‘look like a pigsty’" (Donnell 12). 

Donnell's piece is one of the most fun that I've read for the Twain section of the Year's Work essay. It's about a work that he's rediscovered--which is fascinating and importnat--but he's having so much in it. It's not just the wordplay above, either. He even includes a bit of origami at the end. 

Can confirm that Twain scholars tend towards the hilarious and fun. 

Work Cited

Donnell, Kevin Mac. “Mark Twain’s State Banquet Remarks--A Lost Work Recovered.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 11–38.

Alice Cary gets it...

22 July 2023: Just some real truth from Cary's 1851 story, "My Grandfather": "...children know more, and want more, and feel more, than people are apt to imagine" (16).

Work Cited

Cary, Alice. Clovernook Sketches and Other Stories. Edited by Judith Fetterley, Rutgers UP, 1987.

Two Alice Cary Anecdotes...

21 July 2023: Spent a lot of today reading about Alice Cary (and her sister, Phoebe) and found myself moved by repeated references to this bit of information about their lives as aspiring writers: "According to their biographers, and in the legends the tour guides at Cary Cottage keep alive, the sisters wrote their earliest verse at night, by the aid of a 'saucer of lard with rag wick,' in order to avoid the wrath and contempt of their stepmother" (Fetterley and Pryse 1). 

And one more--again, it comes up more than once in the scholarship: "Ames’s biography opens with a ghost story that Cary related to her friend Ada Carnahan in 1869. The Cary family had just completed a new house across a ravine from their previous home. One afternoon while they were still living in the old house, the family looked out and saw Cary’s thirteen-year-old sister Rhoda holding baby Lucy in the open door of the new house. As the family watched, Rhoda, who had actually been upstairs watching Lucy, came down and joined them in observing the apparition. They continued to watch as the woman with the child began to 'slowly sink, sink, sink into the ground, until she disappeared from sight.' Rhoda died a year later in November, followed by Lucy in December. Cary continued: 'Lucy has been seen many times since by different members of the family in the same house, always in a red frock, like one she was very fond of wearing....Since the apparition in the door, never for one year has our family been free from the shadow of death. Ever since, some one of us has been dying" (Berthold 172-3).

Works Cited

Berthold, Dennis. “The Haunted Narrators of Clovernook: Alice Cary’s Village Gothic.” Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism, edited by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden, University of Alabama Press, 2017, pp. 161–73. 

Fetterley, Judith, and Marjorie Pryse. “Alice Cary: 1820-1871.” Legacy, vol. 1, no. 1, 1984, pp. 1–3. JSTOR. 

92K+

20 July 2023: The word count on this manuscript is now 92K+. Just finished the entry on Women's Rights and Suffrage, one that I struggled with a bit in terms of scope and overlap with other entries and ideas. These general social, cultural, and historical entries present different sets of challenges, like how to boil an entire long movement into a couple thousand words. But that one's done, for now.

Slow going at times, but steady, steady, steady...

Two incoming majors...

19 July 2023: Spent about an hour today (total) in Zoom meetings with two incoming first-year English majors, tweaking their schedules and talking about their academic and career plans. 

When I scheduled these meetings yesterday, I was wiped out from the special Faculty Senate meeting and just all of the fall-out from what's going on at the university. Lots of anxious, confused, angry, and scared colleagues. So adding meetings to my schedule wasn't ideal--I really need/want to focus on my writing. 

But (and I guess this is predictable by now, an arc familiar in these posts?), I am really glad I had the chance to talk with these two young folks today. They are full of energy, potential, and enthusiasm. They are overwhelmed and even quietly afraid, like one should be when taking on a new challenge--and it feels so good to see that, recognize it, and reassure them. They are engaging and charming and impressive as heck already. 

The conversations reinvigorated me and remind me of something that gets a bit lost in the summer: students are always, always, always the best part of the job.

(Also managed to get everything on my daily list done. Invigorating!) 

Justified: City Primeval

18 July 2023: A very hard and busy day on campus--one that has kept me working until literally 15 minutes ago, trying to get through my list after handling everything else that got in the way. But I was bound and determined--to a stubborn degree--to watch at least some of Justified: City Primeval tonight.

I tell you what: 30 seconds of Raylan Givens back on my screen was just the treat I needed as a little reward.

"Next time, I can come! See, I fit!"

17 July 2023: Home sweet home...

My influence, continued...

16 July 2023: 

[Catch-up post]

"Yes! Toilet, toilet, toilet!" --Isla and Krista yesterday morning, as we watched a toilet-smashing episode of Is It Cake. I literally heard about that moment--with the toilet--on a podcast I listened to on the drive-up and knew it would be a hit. I know my audience. 

"We parted the closest of friends..."

15 July 2023: 

[Catch-up post]

Made it to NY for Aidan's party, which was a lot of fun. And I knew I was on Long Island when, within a couple of hours, someone quoted Billy Joel lyrics while relating the story of how he broke up with his high school sweetheart. (Actually a really great story: they broke up after high school, briefly got back together after her marriage broke up but it couldn't work, given their jobs and her young kids, and then got back together again just a few years ago--and celebrated their one-year anniversay this weekend.)

My influence...

14 July 2023: Little trip to NY coming up for Aidan and Colin's graduation parties. Erin and the girls are already up there. Erin sent this dispatch earlier.

I mean, in the long run, my legacy of TV influence on them better be more than this, but I am not ashamed. 

Ice cream break...

13 July 2023: Another very rough day, but about half-way through I texted Hannah, "Wanna get ice cream when you get off work?" She was game and it was lovely. We sat behind White Hall and talked for almost two hours, until a little rainstorm moved through. 

So important in hard times to make moments like this. 

"Twilight is dope!"

12 July 2023: Really, really hard day today, work-wise. Had to take 30 minutes to watch a Parks and Rec just to to chill for a bit--like actual medicine or something. Picked this one, which has too many great lines to list. 

Revising with Jo...

11 July 2023: Said out loud to Jo, "Oh, revision! The fun part!" Not sure she believed me as we got down to it.

Sub shift ended...

10 July 2023: Finished my last of four weeks substitute trivia hosting. Like I've said before, I never really look forward to it but then always have fun. The people are nice, the gig is fun, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But man, those four weeks flew by! 

How to Sell a Haunted House

9 July 2023: "Squirel Baby Jesus crouched in the doorway, its bald tail twitching." --Grady Hendrix, How to Sell a Haunted House

Started this novel, our book club's next selection, and boy, is it a wild, creepy, fun book. I had a goal to reach the first fifty pages today and forced myself to stop at page 141.

Premeditation

8 July 2023: I am calling this one "Premeditation," a clear sign that someone was planning a crime while I changed the sheets this morning.

I really can't overstate how much having her around makes things better, even when she's commiting crimes. The loss of Bing and then Wes still hits hard at times, but she is such a reminder that life and love goes on. 

"Middle of Morning"

7 July 2023: 

That opening wail...it really speaks to me. One of my favorite tracks on the new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit album. 

"sketchiest facts..."

6 July 2023: Got a chuckle out of this phrasing, thinking about how language and connotation changes over time.

Work Cited

Sale, Maggie Montesinos. “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 122: American Women Prose Writers, 1870-1920, edited by Sharon M. Harris, et al., Gale, 2000, pp. 182-192. 

1000 bottles saved!

5 July 2023: Very satisfying to have filled up my bottle and see this baby hit 1000. Did I take a very big sip from that bottle to make sure I was #1000? Of course I did. 

Bit of beauty behind Knutti...

4 July 2023: 

Quiet Monday...

3 July 2023: Relatively quiet day today: mowed the lawn, did some chores, did some writing, watched some TV. It was hot and humid enough outside that, for the first time this summer, lawn-mowing was pretty unpleasant, but darn it if it isn't still satisfying. Hosted trivia again this evening and now listening to the Yankee game before heading to bed soon-ish. (They just won!) Need to get back into a more normal routine soon, but trying not to be too hard on myself for enjoying a bit of a long weekend. 

28 years...

2 July 2023: Made it home from the wedding weekend and have spent the afternoon thinking about how lucky I am to have a friend group that has laughed, celebrated, mourned, grown, and stayed close for nearly 28 years. So blessed. 

Allison and Mike

1 July 2023:

[Catch-up post]

Filled with so many emotions and so much love for Allison and Mike.

Reunited for the wedding weekend...

30 June 2023: 

[Catch-up post]