"Don't Hesitate"

5 November 2025: I saw this Mary Oliver poem being passed around on Bluesky this morning. Still holding onto the joy of last night's election results.

Hope, joy, and protest...

18 October 2025: I couldn't take part in the No Kings Protest here in town (where over 2000 people showed up!) because I was accompanying a group of my students to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival today. They got to listen to Maureen Corrigan deliver a heck of a talk on Gatsby and got to meet Percival Everett. Everett told us, "These are hard times," but reminded us that "the most subversive thing you can do is read." 

Spending time with these students--who love reading, literature, thinking, and the world so much--gives me hope and reminds me that opposition movements need hope and joy.

Getting closer...

25 March 2025: Stopped on my way into my office today to take a good look at this lovely lilac bush out behind Knutti. It won't bloom until late April, at the earliest, I think, but still...you can see they are on their way and that made me smile. Hopeful.

The universe also sent me a "yeah, but not too hopeful" message while I was looking the bush. A kind of big twig came falling down from above, hitting my head and making me jump. I laughed and said, "okay, okay..."

Hope pushing through...

13 March 2025: Today was the gloomiest day, weather-wise, of Spring Break so far. (Not too bad--just chillier and cloudier.) In a way, that made it more meaningful to come across the first of these flowers that I've seen this spring.

Hope, even on a cloudy and chilly day, even in a patch of sandy, other-wise lifeless dirt, even with some trash in the background. 

Hope fighting through.

"For the Bird Singing before Dawn"

4 May 2022:  Lovely and moving poem. Feel like I am constantly swinging between this energy and its complete opposite, but so grateful for when I can embrace it and for the folks who make me believe it.

"Some people presume to be hopeful

when there is no evidence for hope,

to be happy when there is no cause.

Let me say now, I’m with them."

Job's "outraged honesty"

14 March 2022: "In the face of all that appears to be in front of the world today, amid all the calamities we are hurtling toward or already enduring, I’ve found no choice but to share Job’s outraged honesty. Job provides a framework for why it’s worth it to keep going." --Abraham Riesman, in this terrific essay about the book of Job

I read Riesman's essay last night and I think it colored both my dreams and my mindset today. As I continue to think about loss, grief, anger, death, injustice--as we have no choice but to do so--there is something rich to be found digging into what he says here. 

"precarity feels like a world I live in now..."

11 March 2022: 

"I don't think I understood like precarity, like the being delicate, having my life built, be built on things that are so contingent and it could betaken away. And that maybe precarity is not something we can never really get over. Maybe it's something we have to learn how to live beautifully inside. I did not have that, you know, [laughing] because my life had been relatively durable before and predictable. And I think precarity feels like a world I live in now. And what I love about it is that now I can see it everywhere. And it helps me kind of abandoned some of the vanity of individualism, and be like, “'Oh my gosh, like we all belong to each other because we have to.'” --Kate Bower, in an episode of This is Love

This morning on my walk, I finally listened to this episode of This is Love that I have been putting off listening to because it hits so close to home. I am so deeply worried about my friend and feel so helpless to do anything to help her. And I don't even know how to ask in ways that won't add to her burden. I feel like all I keep saying is, "I am so sorry. This sucks and is so unfair." Was kind of relieved to see that Bower says it's what she wants to hear on her toughest days. 

It's also on my mind that today--the Friday before Spring Break--marks two years since we sent our students home and didn't see them again that semester. 

What have I learned since then? I look over that post from two years ago and think about where I am now and it's not that I see many radically new takes. Rather, everything is deeper and more poignant, the good and the bad. The sadness and anger and hopeless is much deeper. So, too, though, are the wells of joy and love and hope. I tried to articulate that a bit in this post. I think it's why so many posts in the past two years have been about gratitude and surprising, uplifting joy. It's a way to push back against the darkness.

But the darkness pushes back. And I worry and feel so sad about my friend. And so many others. And so much.

And, this morning as my walk was winding down, I stopped and sat on a bench out back of Knutti, listening to the last ten minutes of the episode, letting sunlight shine on me and crying a bit, thinking about what a gift and responsibility love is--both giving and receiving. Everything--everything--seems so fragile. And therefore precious when we find and hold it. So we keep watch and honor it.

I need to wrap this up and make sure my eyes aren't too red because in about 15 minutes, I have to go into my ENGL 204 class and finish our discussion of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." My goodness, what a poem for this day and this precise mood. And then I'll send them off, wishing them a restful break, eager for some respite myself, but also excited to see them come back. 

Anticipating Spring

 8 March 2021: Just the other day, I noticed these flowers working their way up on a patch of garden near my front door. A literal and metaphorical sign of better times, I think.

I have never anticipated a spring like this one. In "normal" times, it's my favorite season. This year, the promises of better weather, more time outside, this vaccine in my veins, and so many signs of hope out there fill me with a quiet thrill. (Less and less "quiet" each moment, I suppose.)

The CDC's new guidelines for vaccinated people, released just today, almost made me weep. I texted Erin, saying "we can hang out without masks and distancing!" I texted Hannah that, in a few weeks, we can hang out with an (unvaccinated) Cory. Even before today's guidelines, I was elated over getting to hang out with just a (fully vaccinated) Hannah. 

Come on, spring! Come on, hope!

The email...

1 February 2021: Last night I got the email, the one I have been waiting for since late December: I am getting my first dose of the vaccine on Friday. How to describe this feeling? It is surreal. Combine that with deep relief. A touch of quiet giddiness. A lightness. Gratitude. Luckiness. And, because I am me, a nagging if small sense of guilt that so many are still waiting. 

Someone posted this Mary Oliver poem on Twitter today. It connects, I think, to some of my Big Thoughts today, which is also a snow day (no classes). 

"We Shake with Joy"

We shake with joy, we shake with grief

What a time they have, these two

housed as they are, in the same body.

Hope...

16 December 2020: Over the past two days, I've seen two former students (a doctor and a nurse) and my cousin's wife (a nurse) post pictures of them getting the vaccine. Each time, I well up a bit and feel a spark of hope. 

Closer and closer...

5 November 2020: Even though we knew it could take this long, it's still hard to believe that we still don't have a call on the presidential race. I keep waiting for a call and then all of the sudden, it's 9:00 p.m. That's it--that's the post for today. That's the main story, the one on which so many others turn. 

Deep breaths, continued...

4 November 2020: Oh, the highs and lows of the last 24 hours! I could write and write forever, but I am pretty darn tired and it's just enough to note that I have hope in the midst of being so sad that it's this close.

Also spent a good portion of the afternoon at the vet with Bing. I sat in the car (waiting room is still closed due to COVID) for over an hour while he had tests. My mind went so many places, including some deep despair. Amazingly, the news turned out to be pretty good for an 18 year-old. He's on some medicine for asthma and we'll see. I know his days are winding down--it just has to be true mathematically--but other than these symptoms and some weight loss (might be related), he still seems so happy and fine. I will take all the good days I can get with him, gratefully.

But man...so tired. Need a good night's sleep tonight...and a final call from another state to put Biden over the line would help. 

Waiting, praying...

3 November 2020: Did the thing earlier today. Can't remember feeling more somber, tired, overwhelmed, and anxious in a voting place. Matched the vibes in the lines, by the way. Been home all day, working on some stuff, doing some house work/chores. Took a long walk (of course). 

On that walk, a neighbor who I've never really talked to before answered my "How are you?" with a spontaneous download of emotion that I felt so deeply. She's from England which added an extra layer to our discussion.

A few minutes after that, another neighbor--this one someone I am quite friendly with--talked in her driveway for a good give minutes. "Stiff upper-lip, but it's so hard" kind of stuff. It's just so much.

Now we wait and pray.

This smiling-through-clenched teeth pic gives some clues as to my survival strategy: a comfy chair, good light to read by, water to stay hydrated, and the cats, of course. 

"Keep Breathing"

2 November 2020: Had a restless night's sleep and got to campus early. The day's business kept me distracted, but eventually the work got mostly done and the drowsiness set back in, reminding me of just how tired I am of everything: this administration and its endless cruelty, hate, and cynicism. This epidemic they've managed so catastrophically. This awful man who just needs to go away. Being so anxious and angry and sad all the time. 

If it doesn't start to end tomorrow--if he doesn't lose--I don't know what I'll do. Sadness, fear, anxiety flooded in as I sat at my desk. And "all we can do is keep breathing" came at me again and again from the Pandora station. 

 

I'm home now, changed into warm, comfy clothes, and am watching some distraction TV. I'll try to sleep tonight and we'll see what tomorrow brings. "All we can do is keep breathing..."

Hope

Two words have been on my mind these past couple of days: hope and grace. Such powerful, life-changing words. I'm a bit too tired to be too articulate about them at this point in time, so I'll let others do the talking--about hope, at least.

First, Emily Dickinson:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all-

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Next, a clip from one of my favorite movies: