Veronica as Netflix Properties

30 April 2022: Realized I have created a mini-gallery...

Spring 2022 Grading: DONE!

29 April 2022: Hit "submit" on my last set of grades a little while ago. What a long, quick, tough,  discouraging, affirming, stressful, joyful, sad, tough, strange, and beautiful semester it's been. Gonna take a couple of minutes for some chair-dancing before heading out for my walk. (A bit later today since I was late getting to campus; had to go to Ranson to get Dunkin Donuts for my seminar class.)

"The Adventures of Dillon Helbig"

28 April 2022: Boy, was I charmed by this episode of This Is Love, which I listened to on my walk this morning. I love that this child--like so many children--sees himself as a writer. And he is! I found myself thinking about conversations we have in my Young Adult Lit class and even in the Dickinson seminar. What makes a text a "book"? And who decides which books have value and why? Or how we label them? 

And you know: I love a weird kid.

"i can make do lord i can make do"

27 April 2022: I first heard Quraysh Ali Lansana's poetry on this episode of Poetry Off the Shelf back in 2008. I bought They Shall Run that day. 

Today, I got to meet him in person and hear him read it. It was amazing. Hearing him read "hole" brought me right back to reading the poem for the first time.

15 years!

26 April 2022: Got my "15 years of service" pin and certificate today! Hard to believe it, but I will now officially stop thinking of myself as "new." 

How quickly the last five have gone by. And how slowly. Such is time...

Speeding up...

25 April 2022: Knocked out a pretty detailed outline for my entry on Sui Sin Far today. For me, this kind of outlining is time-consuming--more than one would think, perhaps. But today, parts of it went more quickly than usual (compared to other entries). I am really getting a sense of what ends up in the "Further Reading" section, what might make the final version of the entry (my outlines always include more than I need), and how to connect the pieces inside each entry. 

I am anxious about getting a lot of entries done this summer, so realizing that I am getting better at working efficiently eases my worries a bit. 

Midnight Breakfast!

24 April 2022: Heading out tonight for my first real Midnight Breakfast since April 2019. I missed December 2019 because I had this awful stomach virus. And there wasn't one in April 2020, December 2020, and April 2021. There was an event that I helped with in December--a smaller version called "Nite Bitez," and that was fun--but it wasn't the same. But we are back tonight and I am excited. 

Shep Arts Fest

23 April 2022: First annual (?) Shep Arts Fest at Sam Michaels Park today. A very nice way to spend the day.

McMurran Convocation

22 April 2022: Another long day (though not nearly as long as yesterday) with another great capper at the end: the first in-person McMurran Convocation since 2019. Our department had seven scholars, each of them truly amazing students. I got to watch from the stage in my role as Senate President, which was a fun (if hot--those lights!) perspective. 

Capstones...

21 April 2022: Fourteen hours on campus today and I am beat. But the last part--the first set of our capstone presentations--was so wonderful. I was moved almost to tears by these students, what they've done, and what a pleasure and blessing it has been to know them.

What I'm putting out there...

20 April 2022: It's pretty clear to me that I am not doing a great job hiding my stress and feeling overwhelmed from my students, at least not in my seminar. Today one of them said (in class), "We're worried about your mental health, Dr. H!" It was sweeter and funnier than it sounds. I think I'll take a couple of things away from it: 1) It's really lovely to know they care--and they really do. 2) I need to maybe do a better job reassuring them that I'm okay. Ha. 

Emotional labor...

19 April 2022: I've been thinking about this twitter thread since I read it a couple of hours ago. I like that so much of it is familiar but it also pushed me to rethink the way I frame and value things.

Surprise April snow...

18 April 2022: Same spot as this post, just three days later.

Got home around 8:15 and here's the view of the house. Come back, Spring!

Easter 2022

17 April 2022: So incredibly blessed to have Erin, Eric, and the girls nearby every Easter. And today was also Erin and Eric's 12th anniversary. 

"The Spring Has Many Silences"

16 April 2022: 

"The spring has many silences:
Buds are mysteriously unbound
With a discreet significance,
And buds say nothing.

There are things that even the wind will not betray.
Earth puts her finger to her lips
And muffles there her quiet, quick activity…."

Full poem by Laura Riding Jackson here. 

Both the dogwood out front and the redbud out back have flowered in just the last day or so. Sometimes I find myself just caught up in staring at them. The miracles of spring...