31 August 2023: Finished the second Fuller entry for the book today and--just under the wire--finished my sixteenth entry for the summer (May, June, July, August). Four per month is okay, given how crazy the summer was on campus--and also working on the "Year's Work" essay.
I had hoped to squeeze out one more entry, to average just over four per month, but breaking 100K words today also feels pretty good and a nice way to cap off a summer of writing.
28 August 2023: First regular Faculty Senate meeting of the academic year today. It was also the first in-person meeting since an attempt we made to do a hybrid meeting back in Fall 2021. (It went really poorly and we've been exclusively Zoom since then.) We are alternating this year between Zooom and in-person. All in all, despite some gallows humor, today went pretty well.
But I am counting down the meetings until my term is over. Eleven more to go.
24 August 2023: Making myself write—before I forget it—about ten minutes of delight today. Just walked down the Sweet Shop to get a sandwich and talked with the wonderful manager, Katie, who always asks about the cats (ever since she learned about the cupcakes I would buy for Bing and Wes’s birthday). She told me about her son’s first few days of kindergarten, and how today was the first morning she didn’t cry when dropping him off. (He’s been fine with being dropped off the whole time. Ha!). As I parted, she said, “Come back more! I just love you!” Man, that felt good.
Then I stepped outside and bumped into the Provost, who was walking with one of our new students: a young man who is a football player…an engineering major…and a poet. Where else do you get to meet people like this?
Things will continue to be rough this semester. It’s just inevitable, but the good stuff is still there.
17 August 2023: The Ram Band put on a heck of a preview for their 50th anniversary show.
16 August 2023: "Depsite their powerful attraction to her...men and women came to find her too much for them. And however ardent her desire, Fuller gracefully lets them go. She reclaims them as friends. Fuller never loses self-respect in her frank pursuit of her objects, nor does she lose the esteem of those who refuse her. This is persuasive. And it helps me understand why I have never completely let her go" (Chevigny 266-267).
Two posts in a row about scholarship and letting go, albeit in different ways. This passage from Chevigny's piece was a good one to read on the day I am starting to dive into Fuller for a couple of entries for the book.
Also two posts in a row about scholarly passages that make me feel a bit teary.
Work Cited
Chevigny, Bell Gale. “Forty Years with Margaret Fuller.” Nineteenth-Century Prose, vol. 42, no. 2, 2015, p. 237-272. EBSCOhost.
12 August 2023: "Yet I must also confess to feeling a personal sense of loss. The moment that readers of Mark Twain’s Literary Resources open the Annotated Guide and the detailed Reader’s Guide, they will instantly absorb as much as I have ever known about these subjects. I will no longer be privileged to answer telephone and email inquiries such as those that arrived for decades. But then I remind myself that this act of letting go, of sharing everything one has learned, is, after all, what investigative scholarship must always have as its ultimate and unselfish goal” (xxi).
Still thinking about this beautiful excerpt from Alan Gribben's introduction to the second volume of his monumental Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading, Volume Two, the product of over fifty years of his scholarly labor. My eyes got a bit teary reading these words and being reminded of why literary scholars do the work we do. It's been on my mind today, too, as I toil away at my own (much, much humbler) book and the "Year's Work" essay.
Work Cited
13 August 2023: Slept in a tiny bit, mowed the lawn and did some chores, and am now ready to spend the rest of the day more or less vegging out. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.
11 August 2023: Made a concerted effort to stay away from the bad vibes on campus today. Stayed home instead and worked on my Year's Work essay (which is coming along slowly and steadily). Of course, the atrocious vibes from WVU permeated my headspace.
Just need the students back so I can experience the best part/real joy of this job again.
8 August 2023: I recieved a really wonderful surprise gift from one of my favorite former students today. It just delighted me and made my day. And another feline Jo March approves, too.
3 August 2023: Spent a big old chunk of today in the car, first driving from Himrod to Philadelphia to drop off Vogel, and then back down to Shepherdstown. It was a great trip, though I do wish I gave myself the freedom to stay away a bit longer sometimes. At the same time, it is so good to be home and back to my routine, so, as Taylor would say, "Hi, it's me. I'm the problem," I guess?
But it's also nice to be be with Veronica and Jo, who I always miss when I am gone.
2 August 2023:
[Catch-up post...]
It seems like a failed effort from the start to describe Watkins Glen State Park. Just amazing...
