Ten!

8 June 2025: She won't pose for a decent picture, but here she is, full of deep thoughts and Lil Soup.

She is still so much herself. The most complicated cat I've ever known.

And man, I just love her more and more every year. 

Boxcars!

7 June 2025: Long day today, but happy to cap it off with some friends at our first Boxcars game this summer.

Almost done...

6 May 2025: A couple of days ago, I titled my post "Almost there..." I want to argue that today's post, titled "Almost done..." sounds the same, but it actually means something different in my head. In the first post, I was talking about an idea--almost having it down. I (think I) finally got it--yesterday.

Today "Almost done..." refers to a decent complete draft of the paper. I have a couple of places where I need to write another sentence or two, but I think I can knock them out on Sunday. (Tomorrow is booked from start to finish with other stuff.)

If I can knock those sentences out, that'll be the last item on my weekly "to do" list: a complete draft. (Yes, those lists are back, and that's okay.) 

It does feel a bit weird to be pressuring myself to have a solid, polished draft of this thing done in the next week or so. The conference is in November and I don't know yet if I'll have 15 or 20 minutes. But the one thing I know is that if I can get things done ahead of time--before the semester starts--I'll be happier. 

Lost and found...

5 June 2025: Last fall, my old laptop just stopped working. I felt mostly okay about its abrupt exit because everything was backed up. But later, I realized a few things weren't including, almost all of my video files. 

I figured this out when I went looking for a series of videos of me arriving home from work and waking up Bing who had, by that time, gone deaf. He always woke up happy to see me and it made me happy. 

And they were gone. 

So, I was bummed.

Every once in a while, I would think, I should just try one more time to see if that old computer will turn on. Today, I finally tried. 

And it worked.

From October 2020, with bonus Wesley content that also made me smile and tear up. Those amazing boys...

You can be darn sure I backed those videos up. 

Almost there...

4 June 2025: I am in a phase of drafting my SSAWW paper where the nuanced version central idea is starting to come together. (I have a thesis, but usually there’s a more specific one lurking, waiting to emerge.) A piece just clicked into place a couple of hours ago—about a lack of authorial intention—that feels promising. There’s just one more piece, I think, and I am on the verge. 

It’s a cool place to be. The frustrating is slowly receding and the next step—a complete first draft—is coming up, Lord willing.

"a 'boom' in it"

3 June 2025: Made my way through a really cool new edition of Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson today and was delighted by a couple of excerpts from his letters that appeared in the editor's introduction.

First, in 1892, he writes about his enthuiasm for the book and notes, “I believe there’s a ‘boom’ in it” (520). 

Second, in 1893, he tells a friend, “I’ve finished the book & revised it. The book didn’t cost me any fatigue, but revising it nearly killed me. Revising books is a mistake” (545).

Work Cited

Griffin, Benjamin, editor. Pudd’nhead Wilson: Manuscript and Revised Versions with “Those Extraordinary Twins.” By Mark Twain, U of California P, 2024. 

A study in contrasts...

2 June 2025: For the "Year's Work" essay, I spent some time this afternoon reading through a new collection of Twain's writing, a collection with a pretty cool theme and idea driving it. I was so disappointed, though, that the editor made a point of highlighting and celebrating these awful AI-generated illustrations he included. They are so janky-looking and depressing. 

Moreover, right after, I reviewed another new collection, this one structured around gathering and celebrating human-created illustrations. The constrasts between the two approaches and their results are stunning. 

And, of course, I keep thinking about the piece I read and blogged about specifically about what Twain can teach us about AI.

Graduation Brunch...

1 June 2025: I was in a melancholy mood for a lot of yesterday, so I am grateful that today offered an opportunity to bring my spirits up. I was invited to a graduation brunch for Louisa, Lucy, and Flora (the first two, from high school, and Flora, from college). I've known these kids since they were little--since the younger ones were in pre-school--so it is mind-blowing to see them so grown-up. But they are also three kids who will do great things in the world. There's that hope I was talking about yesterday.

“lonely old courage-teacher”

31 May 2025: 

“Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?” –Allen Ginsberg’s closing line to “A Supermarket in California”

Like every year when we reach May 31, I find myself thinking about Whitman. This year, with everything that he loved about America under attack, I find myself voicing the least poetic and almost embarrassing echo of Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California.” 

This could not have been the America Whitman had in mind when he took his last breath. The ignorance, hate, and cruelty can bring you to your knees with sadness. (And here I think of the bowed knees in "The Wound Dresser," an symbol of devastation, exhaustion, and deepest pain, but also respect, holiness, humility, and servitude.)

And here I see that maybe I am wrong or at least not completely right—and here I contradict myself, I guess—because he also would see a lot to love and so many to root for. On a quiet Saturday night, my mind fills with images of those who give me faith and hope, even if they sit alongside all of what makes me despair. 

Our “lonely old courage-teacher” is more important than ever. 

Even As We Breathe

30 May 2025: Just finished Even As We Breathe, by Anne Saunooke Clapsaddle, this fall's Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. I enjoyed it, especially the way Clapsaddle plays with memory and storytelling, with our young narrator conjuring, for instance, vivid memories of moments he couldn't possibly remember (or could he?). 

I also admire a book that honors the kind of relationships or love that defy easy categorization. In one scene, Cowney, as an old man, reflects back on his youthful, love-struck self: "I couldn't understand why we weren't an automatic fit for each other, a promised pair in this strange place. In the years since, I have learned that not all love is made of equal parts. There are more kinds of deep affection than we are sometimes willing to accept in our society" (106).

Work Cited

Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke. Even As We Breathe. Fireside Industries Books, 2020. 

Still scared and nosy...

29 May 2025: A handywoman (who is also a former student) came over today for a couple of projects. Once again, Jo proved herself to be both scared and nosy, with nosy winning out eventually, as she crept closer even with the loud sander going.

Quite the resume...

28 May 2025: As I type up notes this evening, I am continuing the very slow first-time watch of C.S.I. (started last summer). I made it to season five, episode 15, where a very familiar face played the very much non-nurturing mother of an "adult baby." (This show is so wild...)

Anyway, the actress, Nan Martin, had a long career, but two iconic (to me) roles stand out: Freddy Krueger's mom in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Child and Frieda Claxton on Golden Girls. 

What a career! 

Do cats hallucinate?

27 May 2025: When I got home from trivia a bit ago, Jo was chasing something around the house quite insistently. But I didn't see anything. She would stop for a bit, then take off again, agitated as heck. But still, I couldn't see anything. I was like, "Ummm...is she seeing something that isn't there?" Was she hallucinating? 

And then I went into a mini-spiral: is it because she only has one eye? Is it because she's sick? She did sneeze a time or two and had a little more sleep in her eye than usual? And if she is seeing things, what does that mean? 

Never was more relieved when an actual fly moved through the room. Whew! 

(It even dive-bombed my head as I typed this; I suspect she's already made contact with it and it isn't at full-abiilties!)

And, yes: they can hallucinate, apparently, but she wasn't. 

He even taught the cat tricks...

26 May 2025: I really love a piece like Kevin Mac Donnell's essay on George Griffin, who worked as a butler of sorts for Sam Clemens and his family for years and who a model for Jim in Huck Finn (along with two other men). It's a combination biography, literary criticism, and detective story. Mac Donnell tells readers the story of George's life--a truly astounding one, fit for a movie or a stand-alone book. Then he introduces and does a close reading of a recent discovery--the only known photo of this extraordinary man. 

Mac Donnell is such a good writer that he makes it work better that you expect it to--the whole thing: the biography, the historiography, the authentication and verification of that photo. It's a lot to do in a limited space. And then he just nails the ending, explaining why that photo matters.

“We have had a much longer time to think about Mr. Griffin than Huck had to think about Jim, but have we really seen Mr. Griffin before us all that time? If not, we can certainly see Mr. Griffin before us now. He meets our gazes, eye-to-eye, confident, human, knowing. Do we see his humanity? We Americans—all of us—have had a very long time to look into the faces of others who do not look like us—others—whose races, ages, sexes, ethnicities, heights, weights, disabilities, sexual identities, religions, and socioeconomic classes do not mirror our own. Surely, we see their humanity. But as we move forward, shall we, like Huck, be willing to go to hell for the sake of our common humanity?” (44).

[And yes: Griffin taught one of the Clemens' cats, Abner, how to ring the bell four times "like a servant" (19).]

Work Cited

Mac Donnell, Kevin. “George Griffin: Meeting Mark Twain’s Butler Face-to-Face.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, 2024, pp. 11–58.

"Exodus"

25 May 2025: Finally getting caught up on the last season of The Handmaid's Tale and though there are lots of legitimate criticisms to make of the show, darn it if it still doesn't get to me. One line in "Exodus," the episode I just finished, made me tear up (even as I was annoyed at myself for being taken in): 

"We're rising up because in each and every one of us is this immaculate soul that was given to us by God that is just crying out for dignity and freedom."

Pretty good writing, especially in these hard days.