A Place Called Home

What you can do when your classroom is in the building right next to the art museum... 

Katrín Sigurðardóttir's "Unbuilt Residences" fit perfectly with the Robert Young passage that begins "You find yourself a refugee..." and so we did a little tour in the last twenty minutes of class yesterday.

#MSUBroad
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Weekend Sibling Summary (Hello and Goodbye)

Weekend:

First this:

Then this:

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Saturday at Alma

Spent this Saturday in retreat/orientation with the new MacCurdy women. We got some new furnishings and tees with the last of the budget last year, elected house officers, made plans for a year of programming, and started a statement to change "women's house" to "women-presenting and women-perceived." All in all, a rather busy two days. On to classes...









Nu came along to Alma for the day, and hung out with At helping make posters and eat pizza at his  DSA event...

Compulsory Heterosexuality

More than one student has told me how Adrienne Rich's Reflections on "Compulsory Heterosexuality" changed their lives. I was thinking of that today when I was looking for a card to celebrate our newlywed colleague T and her wife whom K and I were taking out to dinner. Even bunnies and birds were pretty gendered, and it took me longer than usual to find a nice card. Between that and having to read a whole Elle article on my phone before I could pick a nice champagne in our budget, I spent way too much time at the store. Ha.

Sunshine (underrated)

Twitter student evals.


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Honors Day

I woke up this morning excited for Honors Day.

At was nominated for the Kapp Prize 

as were two of my students, 

and chances were that I'd be

celebrating at the end of the day. 

(And not just because it was my Boss Day.)

Sure enough: At's presentation was 

AHHHMAZING 

and my dear student MW won the Kapp. 

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Even better!

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Teen Vogue: Fashion, Beauty, Entertainment... and the Resistance

I knew she was brilliant, I had no idea she'd be just so dang nice! I told her what seeing her so Indian name on the masthead at feministing.com more than 15 years ago meant to me, what it means to see her leading Teen Vogue into the resistance... and she wove that into her keynote that evening.
Also: she hadn't had breakfast when I picked her up, and she told me she had texted her mom later to say--Indian Lady picked me up; I got food inside of twenty minutes.
Yup, I have superpowers too.

#SamhitaMukhopadhyay



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Plans Are Getting Better

To think that I couldn't wait to start using my 2019 planner, and here I am almost a quarter of the way in, having barely used it. Worse: nearly all of my sabbatical term is over, and I haven't done any of the important stuff I meant to do.

I re-started the planner with all five colors of ink today--I feel so much more intentional and focused when I can confirm at a glance that the various modalities of life are in (chromatic) balance. And I reconfigured the to-do list to make it more realistic given how little time remains between now and getting stuff ready for the spring term.

It may be that it is the prep work that drags the most. And that's where I spent most of my time today--I enjoy being poetry editor--and today was about prepping the selected poems for Dropbox and publication; I love being the advisor to the feminist house--and I spent hours making sure the application materials for next year reached the relevant channels and vetting and worrying about applications; I love teaching in the classroom--and so much of today was re-reading materials and organizing the e-reader (okay this last thing was fun).

Also fun: The Spotify playlist I curated for our class.

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#BalanceForBetter2019

International Women's Day tea @ MacCurdy House

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Happy Birthday to me!

We went all the way out to Ann Arbor for brunch...  it was delicious, decadent, and worth it.

This was yesterday, actually. I have a difficult work meeting today--more on that tomorrow, and At said he couldn't miss his evening class to do a birthday dinner tonight. L says I should be proud of him for not wanting to miss class (I'm trying!!).




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:/

Women's March 2019

One wouldn't be able to tell by this lone, sad, cold poster stuck to our Little Free Library--but it was a great Women's March today. Esp. if you were judging by the roomful of excited students who joined us for dinner.









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A Day in the Life of Someone on Sabbatical

DD texted to see if I wanted to go to bookclub together, and I texted back to say I was actually at the college coming off of my 6th straight meeting. Before I hit up bookclub at Lucky's Steakhouse, I had to have dinner with a Psych department faculty candidate at Capital Prime another steakhouse clear on the other side of town. That's two too many steakhouses for someone who doesn't even eat steak. Anyway.

By the time I got to Lucky's discussions were underway, but there were so many lovely people I knew and I got to stop by the different tables for hellos and hugs. But even the lovely people looked at me funny when I said I'd already had dinner so I ordered a giant dessert to show I do eat. I am mature and self assured.

By the time I got home Nu and the puppies were asleep (school night) as was Big A (he's working tonight) and I sat there in the living room, with the radio on, catching up on email and beginning to feel queasy and kinda anxious. And then I figured it out and texted our college boy who was awake (college life).
 

It was M. Night Shyamalan night on WKAR's Michigan Matinee.

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My Term of Rest and Relaxation

I heard My Year of Rest and Relaxation was funny and thought it would be funny to read it now since I'm on a sabbatical (term not the whole year, but...).

But OMG, while I chortled in a few places, I was so saddened and depressed from this overall.

And... I worked on campus from 9-7 today, so I'm doing the sabbatical wrong too.




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Kin

This was sometime after I'd talked about Harraway and "Make kin not babies!" and C said  gesturing at dinner--"You mean like this? Like you do?" And it felt like this might be the best compliment ever.







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Senior Seminar Dinner

It wasn't easy, but it was wonderful.





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Now Cage-Free

I reached out to the iconic Marilyn Frye some time ago asking her to speak at the college, and she declined. She must have sensed my immense (fandom and) disappointment, however, because she asked if I wanted to have coffee. Did I? YES. (I interpreted that as tea, but if I had to drink coffee in order to meet her, I would have.)

I got to gush about her work, and tell her I've lost count of the number of times I meet old students who have forgotten the details of every other reading, but remember  "the birdcage." She was so warm and lovely and generously claimed to love the stuff I'm working on right now. We talked for a couple of hours at Chapelure, and then I floated home on a wave of happiness.



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Student Dinner

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Windows

At the first First Year Seminar meeting back in the last week August, I may have wished that our classroom had windows.

At every twice-weekly meeting since, my students have drawn me a window on the blackboard by the time I get to class.

I love them.



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