Six meetings...

15 February 2022: I had six meetings on campus today about six very different topics. I don't feel like I got a lot done on any one front, but little steps forward count, too. (By the way, should have been seven, but someone stood me up...)

"Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem"

14 February 2022: Stumbled across this poem early today and found it so lovely and swoony. Its specificity--right down to the name brands--gives it such a realness. 

Pancakes and a play...

13 February 2022: For Galentine's Day, I got some IHOP with Amy this afternoon. Then we headed to campus to see a play. The show grew out of a Theater department class last semester, where students sort of organically brought together ideas and concepts. It ended up being about healing and moving forward. Quite an accomplishment that they should be proud of. 

"Beware of those who teach fables to children..."

12 February 2022: Still swimming in all things Alcott these days, and this quotation from Ednah Dow Cheney's 1899 review of Little Women really makes me smile: 

“Louisa May Alcott is universally recognized as the greatest and most popular story-teller for children in her generation. She has known the way to the hearts of young people…Plato says: ‘Beware of those who teach fables to children’; and it is impossible to estimate the influence which the popular writer of fiction has over the audience [she] wins to listen to [her] tale…[Her] seductive powers of imagination and sentiment takes [sic] possession of the fancy and the heart before judgement and reason are aroused to defend the citadel ” (qtd. in Quimby, 13).

As Karin Quimby notes, Cheney--a great admirer of Alcott and one of her earliest biographers--senses what so many readers see about the novel: “Cheney betrays the anxiety that the story contains something more subversive, more seductive, in the regions of imagination and feeling” (14).

Work Cited

Quimby, Karin. “The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1-22. Project Muse.

Early Galentine's/Birthday Celebrating

[Catch-up post]

11 February 2022: Hannah and I hung out here at the house for hours last night, a kind of impromptu early celebration of her birthday, which delightfully coincides with Galentine's Day. We didn't do anything but talk, listen, and eat take-out, but it was one of the best nights I've had in so long. 

Thinking about this past week--and I am knocking on wood as I type this--it feels like things are looking up. Something turned and that's good. Hoping/praying it stays that way. 

Ping-pong day...

10 February 2022: A bit of a ping-pong ball day that found me running all around campus with a mid-day trip to an appointment in Martinsburg, too, before heading back to campus. The weather was sunny and warm(ish) and the day was a good one, as person after person I interacted with was kind, warm, and helpful. And it's Tara's birthday, so we got to have a nice phone conversation. 

Very grateful.

Mental break...

9 February 2022: Just took a dash around the block here on campus. I took my longer walk this morning, but was feeling antsy and anxious after sitting in this building all day since then. The sun is out, it's in the 50s (!), and it felt so good to be out there. I also joined the You're Wrong About patreon last night to unlock a bunch of bonus episodes. This is precisely the energy I need right now. 

Hoping to get home before it's dark today to stretch out on the bed, let the sunlight come in through the windows, and do some reading with Wesley, which I managed to do yesterday.*

*Here's a thing I said to Wesley this morning just before leaving, after a night of weird dreams: "Love you so much, bud! Have a good day! In my apocalyptic dreams, I take you with me. It's you and me, buddy." I did say they were weird dreams, didn't I? (Something low-key sad in the dream: Bing was also there and I was taking all three of them with me as we fled whatever it was we were fleeing.)

"so you better run..."

8 February 2022: Can't remember the last time I wanted to manifest the energy and message of a song so much. In an oft-repeated move lately, literally teared up listening to it when it came on just now. Please, please, please...

"But maybe that's where God meets us..."

7 February 2022: "But maybe that's where God meets us, she thinks, in that broken, uncertain place." --writer Emma Green, talking about Rebecca Schrader and her evolving thoughts on faith, life, and the abortion debate, in this powerful This American Life segment.

Listened to Rebecca's story on my walk this morning and found it surprising and moving. Green does a lovely job treating everyone involved with humanity and compassion. And this move at the end--quoted above--is profound and profoundly important as we move through what feels like a very broken and uncertain place. 

Eden's Outcasts and Sunday vibes...

6 February 2022: Nothing to see here. Just me crying literal tears in my office on campus on a Sunday morning as I finish up Eden's Outcasts, my second book in as many weeks chronicling Louisa May Alcott's life. I know that it wasn't all bad, but parts of her life strike me as so frustratingly sad. Even though I knew it's coming, I am especially moved by the end of both books (because of how chronological order works, ha!), when little Lulu has arrived, but Alcott is only in her life for about seven years. And the pain and work and anxiety that marked her life. Ugh. 

But this part made me laugh out loud: after her Little Women success, tourist flocked to Concord. Matteson writes, "At one public appearance, an energetic matron worked [Alcott's] arm like a pump handle and exclaimed, 'If you ever come to Oshkosh, your feet will not be allowed to touch the ground; you will be borne in the arms of the people.' Louisa vowed never to visit Oshkosh" (383). 

Daffodil

5 February 2022: In March 2022, right before everyone went home for what turned out to be the rest of the semester, one of my favorite students (a label that I attach to so many of them because that's how lucky I am) came by my office to talk about her project. On her way over, she had picked a little yellow and orange daffodil for me. "I'll keep this," I said, "until we're all together again." 

It was a sentimental, throw-away comment, I guess, full of naïve wishful thinking. But I put it in a little glass of water, kept it in my office on campus, and eventually, took it home and put it in my kitchen window. It dried out and stayed right there for months. I would look at it and think of her and all of my students, now just words on a screen or occasional faces on Zoom. 

Since then, that same student has a way of popping back up to say kind and gracious things just when I need them, even when I don't realize that I do. That includes this morning when she emailed me a sweet message just to say hello and tell me she hoped I was doing okay. I wrote her back and did my best to make it clear what a gift of a person she is. I hope she realizes it.  

And what a life I have to be surrounded by so many people who are gifts to those who know them. 

"The Masque of the Red Death"

4 February 2022: It's a heck of a thing to teach Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" in 2022. Another reminder of the stunning relevance of so much great American literature. And these students get it and see all of the connections, especially between Prince Prospero and the former president. (I didn't have to say it--they knew it.) 

Walking on Sunshine

3 February 2022: It was cloudy and rainy all day, but I did something today that made me feel like I was walking on sunshine: a Zoom session with one of my favorite former students for this initiative University Marketing is working on. We were the first ones--the pilot, if you will--and it went so well. She was amazing (of course she was). It was just such a pleasure to talk with her, hear her speak so authentically and movingly about her time at Shepherd, and to see what a confident, professional, and decent person she is now. And we helped her do that. We got to help her do that. 

It's no secret that I've been really down lately. And this doesn't mean everything is better now. But what a reminder that I am blessed, blessed, blessed. 

"Grandfather of the Forest"

2 February 2022: Listened to this episode of This is Love on my walk this morning and found it quite moving. For over one hundred years, people have tried to save the American Chestnut tree and we keep trying, even if it might never work and if these people will never see their efforts come to fruition. Because it's worth fighting for and worth doing. Phoebe quotes a couple of lines from W.S. Merwin's poem "Place" in the end and it literally almost stopped me in my tracks: " On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree." Pushing back against loss...seems like a theme that speaks to me lately. 

WFH Day...

1 February 2022: A kind of rare weekday work-from-home day for me. I had an eye appointment in the morning and no meetings scheduled for the rest of the day. At first it was a bit tough to get motivated, but eventually, I sort of hit my stride. When I do this again, I might try to schedule the day out, just to make sure I am more disciplined from the start. 

I finished a decent draft of the Hospital Sketches entry, which feels good. And Wes likes me being here. (Maybe BabyCat does, too?) 

But I am glad that I'll see some folks tomorrow.