Proud of this girl...

30 November 2023:

Annual vet visit accomplished. I had budgeted soooo much time to catch her and she basically...didn't run? She sensed what was up and just stopped on her little mat, meowed mournfully, and let me grab her. She yelled the whole way there and back, but behaved just fine when we were there, got a good report, and we were out of there just after 8:00 (for what was an 8:00 appointment—got there early because there was no chasing involved). 

The doctor did say--like they say every year--that her heart was really racing and she clearly wasn't happy. I was like, "same!" But everything looks good. 

When I let her out of the carrier, I said, "all done until next year, God willing!" 

The slightest nod...

29 November 2023: I love those moments in class when a student gives you the slightest nod as you articulate a point and--given everything you know about that student (their background, the way they think)--you know that nod means something big. It happened today in my Bible as Literature class as I stumbled my way through some thoughts about the book of Revelation. That nod means that they are thinking the mess of ideas is hard and tentative and deeply felt. Just such a cool thing to see play out. 

"I certainly like this job you have given me..."

28 November 2023: I am working on my next entry and really loved this fun piece by Cari Carpenter, about (in part) the investigation Zitkala-Ša and a friend, Charlotte Jones, conducted into claims by “Princess Chiquilla,” who claimed Indian ancestry.

Here’s a great part (everything in color is directly quoted from the article): In a letter, Zitkala-Ša gives “ominous warnings about the mission's potential danger. Still we have to go on trying to show that the majority, a large majority of our race is morally clean and it is well to find out the "fakers," perhaps they are not real Indians. That sometimes happens. Then, knowing them, we need never be misled by anything they attempt to do. Be very cautious,—say nothing on this matter for publication. Just quitely [sic] secure information, but do not attempt to see them alone, always have a good friend with you.

Jones's response indicates her delight in this task: ‘I certainly like this job you have given me. One of my chief literary dissipations is to read good detective stories, and now I feel almost as if I were acting one’” (Carpenter 146).

Work Cited

Carpenter, Cari. “Detecting Indianness: Gertrude Bonnin’s Investigation of Native American Identity.” The Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 2005, pp. 139–59. JSTOR.

Last week of classes...

27 November 2023:  Here we are--both at long last and all of the sudden. My students seem tired already, even after a week of break. I feel them on that; slept badly last night and dragging a bit already. But at the same time, what I tell them is true: we've got this. One more week of classes, then one week of exams, then break.

Saltburn

26 November 2023: My goodness, what a wickedly fun movie Saltburn is! A heck of a way to wrap up Thanksgiving Break--along with a fun book club meeting after.  

The series continues...

25 November 2023: Since it's not just Netflix properties anymore, so we'll have to change the name to "Veronica as Streaming Properties..."

Three in November...

24 November 2023: Pounded out my entry on Jane Johnston Schoolcraft today, which means (with about a week to spare) that I wrote three entries in November. So far, still on track to complete twelve entries from September through December. 

Thanksgiving 2023

23 November 2023:Some pictures from Thanksgiving at the McNett house.

With Krista and my silly veggie turkey.

Doing the "mashed potato" at dinner.

The chefs with their work.

Art with Isla.

Just hanging with two of my favorite people.

Getting in the spirit...

22 November 2023: 

Also a good reminder that we are about 8 days from me diving into the Christmas episodes...

Home opener...

21 November 2023: Got to watch the women's basketball home opener this afternoon. They didn't win, but it was a close (if messy). I still had a great time and it's fun to get a first look at the new players. I see some potential there! 

Three hours at DQ...

20 November 2023: Met Hannah for dinner at Dairy Queen just after 5:00 this evening and before we knew it, it was 8:00. It was pretty dead in there, but when we realized how long we had been there, I said to her, "Do you think the kids at the counter think we died?" Anyway, it says so much about our friendship that three hours can fly by and I still feel like we have more to talk about. What a blessing this friendship has been in my life. 

Autumn weekend walk...

19 November 2023:

Things that made me happy on my walk through my neighborhood, in order of appearance, on a truly beautiful autumn day:

1. A very cute family raking leaves. This family is consistently cute, but it was off the charts today: the oldest boy was actually working next to his dad. The younger boy had a toy rake and was “helping” clean out a flowerbed. The baby girl—old enough to sit up, but not to crawl too far—sat on her bum and played with a few leaves. Top-notch cuteness.
2. A dad and his Taylor-Swift-shirt-clad daughter tossing a football. Casual, not too far apart, not too dramatic. Just having fun.  
3. My friends’ boys, outside their house, playing on a skateboard. These kids (there are three total—two boys and a girl) are terrific, but I am always so delighted when they wave at or talk to me when I walk by. I feel like I don’t have enough little kids in my life these days, so I am grateful for their friendliness. 
4. Three cats outside a house whose owners feed a big group of ferals (a calico, a solid black, and an orange tabby) basking in the sun—laying, rolling, just loving it. 

Take Care of Maya

18 November 2023: My goodness, this documentary! Just found myself crying watching it. What a nightmare of a story. Not the most uplifting viewing for the first day of break, but I am glad to have watched it. 

Made it...

17 November 2023: So relieved to have made it to Thanksgiving Break. It's been a heck of semester and I feel like I was white-knuckling it the past couple of weeks. I've told people I've felt like I am landing a plan with the landing gear not working and the thing is sparking and flaming, but darn it, it's landing. 

I am looking forward to zero obligations until Thursday--and that's a pleasant obligation (Thanksgiving with Erin and her family). Lots of work to get done, but on my own schedule, with time for resting built in, too. 

"something to do in the world..."

16 November 2023: Just finished my Jewett entry and cracked the 120K-word count barrier, both of which feel pretty darn good. I am a tiny bit bummed not to have found a place to include this excerpt from an 1873 letter that Jewett, then a young writer, penned to Hoarce E. Scudder: 

“I am getting quite ambitious and really feel that writing is my work - my business perhaps; and it is so much better than making a mere amusement of it as I used…I am glad to have something to do in the world and something which may prove very helpful and useful if I care to make it so, which I certainly do” (27). 

There is something so pure about her earnestness here, her belief that writing is her work and that it is something to “do in the world” that might “prove very helpful and useful.” 

Work Cited

Jewett, Sarah Orne. Sarah Orne Jewett: Letters. Edited with an introduction by Richard Cary, Colby College P, 1956.

Noted!

15 November 2023: "Honestly, I might be a little too interested..." --a student in my Bible as Literature class talking about her enthusiasm for her paper topic: femme fatales, specifically Medea and Delilah.

Made me chuckle...and not want to mess with her. 

Sleepy co-worker...

14 November 2023: Feeling a bit under the weather today (negative COVID tests so far), so I stuck close to home. Got some writing and grading done, accompanied at times by a very sleepy buddy.

That second photo cracks me up. She's got her paw resting on the ball cap, giving her just what she needs to maintain that weird position. She's just too much. 

Three conferences

13 November 2023: I had three very different paper conferences with three students today, each of them worth remembering. 

The first student has been ill, but is resilient. He asked for (and immediately got!) and extension for the paper that was due today. We read through the draft together and I was impressed by the depth of his engagement with the material (Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil"). His paper is personal in that who he is is shaping his approach, but also academic, and it's cool to see that kind of connection. 

The second student has really low self-confidence, but has come a long way. Her draft still needs a lot of work, but it was a delight to stop at times, point to a sentence, and say, "You see what you did here? How you couldn't do that a year ago?" as she nodded her head in agreement. 

The third is a student came in with a draft longer than she anticipated. Her suitemates, she explained, were all gone for a stretch of time this weekend, and she just started writing. "Isn't that exactly what we need sometimes--quiet and time and space to write?" I said to her, thinking about my own writing. Especially lovely about this student and this draft? How much fun she's having writing about this topic--a topic she really cares about (Peter in the New Testament). 

Just the best job, still... 

Last mow...

12 November 2023: Pretty sure I gave the yard the last mow of the season today, though I guess with climate change, you never know. I wish I had taken a photo, but I still get such a sense of satisfaction when it looks clean and neat, especially when a mow can do double-duty, taking the place of raking leaves. Still something sad about it, though, as winter approaches, with a long stretch of cold and dark days. 

The Marvels

11 November 2023: I know the reviews are mixed, but I thought The Marvels was a lot of fun. All three actresses are really appealing--and Iman Vellani is so darn charming and cute. Not a ton of big, booming battles, lots of jokes...and so much cat content. A blast! 

Pie and volleyball...

10 November 2023: After a long day of classes, meetings, and conferences with a student, my weekend kicked off this evening with a stint as a pie contest judge (as part of a fundraiser for the Sociology and Criminal Justice Club) followed by a volleyball game. That's precise the kind of randomness and eclecticism that makes me love my job. 

"I had a desire to go out farther into the world..."

9 November 2023: Quietly working from home this morning before heading up to campus for a big Board of Governor's meeting. A lot on my mind, but I find myself profoundly moved by thIis passage from Carol Schachinger's essay: 

“In a fascinating essay, ‘The Confessions of a House­Breaker,’ written when she was just beginning her relationship with Fields, Jewett writes of breaking out of the house in a pre­dawn walk through the village. Even so small an act of defying convention causes her to look over her shoulder: ‘I had a desire to go out farther into the world, and I went some distance up the street, past my neighbors' house; feeling a sense of guilt and secrecy that could hardly be matched. . . . But if any one had suddenly hailed me from a window I should have been inclined to run home as fast as my feet could carry me. In such fashion are we bound to the conventionalities of existence!’ Central to the experience is a clairvoyant connection to a distant friend—a feeling that another person is awake and close to her in spirit: ‘an understanding between us sprang up quickly, like a flame on the altar to Friendship, in my heart’ (239). I imagine her in love with Annie Fields, unable to sleep, still struggling inwardly with what such an attachment means in a society that doesn't even have a word for love between women besides the euphemism ‘Boston marriage.’ Breaking through the bounds of convention causes her extreme anxiety: she ‘steals’ out of the house, feels ‘astray’ as she goes farther down the street, but soon is overcome by a sense of exhilaration at her daring. She jumps the fence on her return home (a decorous woman in her thirties) instead of opening the gate, then feels ‘dismayed afterward at such singular conduct’ (243). I can imagine her stealing back upstairs in the dark house to her room, falling asleep in the dawn to awaken hours later still ‘delighted and puzzled’ about the implications of her symbolic breakout (243)” (Schachinger 281-282).

Schachinger, Carol. "Sarah Orne Jewett's Maine: A Journey Back.” Jewett and Her Contemporaries: Reshaping the Canon, edited by Karen L. Kilcup and Thomas S. Edwards. UP of Florida, 1999, pp. 277-286.

"Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars"

8 November 2023: Had a Whitman moment when I got home today (another long day--not all bad, but overwhelming...). Needed to get some more steps in and headed out for a bit. Looked up, felt my breath catch at the beauty of the clear night sky. Breathed in the cool air and embraced being quiet and alive. 

Nosy and brave but also a little bit scared...

7 November 2023: Someone was very interested in the plumbers at work this morning. (Nothing major--just replacing the leaky disposal.) Eventually, she got very brave and appeared ready to strap on a tool belt and help, so she got locked in the guest room until they left.

"Mars vs. Mars"

6 November 2023: Oh my goodness...what a Monday. Got home after 8:00 p.m. after a non-stop day with still so much to do. After a three-hour (!) Senate meeting, I texted Hannah that I felt like I wanted to simultaneously run around the block and go to sleep--that kind of overwhelmed. 

Anyway, got home, did my evening chores, ate dinner, and then sat down to knock a couple more things off my list. My mind was still in that "run or sleep" place. The perfect thing to calm me down/help me focus while working/lift my mood? The "Mars vs. Mars" episode of Veronica Mars. (Slowly doing a rewatch of Season One...) 

Having Veronica Mars Hanrahan and Jo March Hanrahan around also helps. 

Women Talking

5 November 2023: “Doubt and uncertainty and questioning are inextricably bound together with faith.” --Miriam Toews, Women Talking

This morning, I pulled into my driveway at just the moment that the audiobook of this tremendous novel concluded--with a chorus of women singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee." Sat there in my car, listening as tears filled my eyes. This one will stay with me for a long time. 

Two good things...

4 November 2023:

1) We hosted a really great NWP workshop/meet and greet on campus this morning. About twenty of us gathered to talk about teaching and writing. It's always a special privilege to spend time with K-12 teachers, whose work just awes me.

2) I saw Killers of the Flower Moon this afternoon and--long run-time be darned--it knocked my socks off. What a movie!

Friday evening work session...

3 November 2023: Still up at the office as the clock hits 8:00 p.m., another 12+ hour day up here. But I don't mind because I've spent the last 2.5 hours pushing through a draft of my Helen Hunt Jackson entry. It's done--the draft, that is. Another round of revisions awaits me tomorrow, but that's also the fun part. In a bit, I'll head home, picking up dinner on the way, relax for a couple of hours, and then hit the sheets. Gotta be back up here by 9:00 or so tomorrow for an NWP event, but that will be okay, too. 

Jo's check up...

2 November 2023: After two decades of at best resistant cats, it is very strange to have one be relatively fearless at the vet. Jo got upset, loud, and bite-y when she got her shots, but otherwise just kept exploring--and bounced right back to being friendly when the shots were done. Such a fun little girl. (Would not stand still long enough for a decent photo...)

Tau Sigma Induction...

1 November 2023: One of my favorite events on campus every year was held today: the induction ceremony for Tau Sigma, the transfer student honor society. It's really lovely to see these students--representing a significant percentage of our student body (33%)--succeeding and to celebrate that. It's also a mercifully brief ceremony. What's not to like?