Summer Blessings

 Book Club yesterday








Hike #HarrisNatureCenter









Farmers' Market today







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When the Eng. Lit. Prof. gets the joke:

It's a Nice Day to... Start Again

I should have grades done soon, and that will be goodbye to a satisfying four weeks of Spring Term.  My first assay at a travel term, The Empire Writes Back: Cosmopolitan England threw a bunch of non-majors into cultural theory and they took to it in a most satisfying way: looking at The British Museum critically; hypothesizing about Britain's Roman connections; seeing empire in Victorian fiction, reciting poetry at all the landmarks; talking to Sunny Singh and Robert JC Young... I love all those moments and I love all those kids.

It was terrifying too--in all the ways that being responsible for 15 young people can be. But we're all safely back. My secret weapon was taking Nu with me, so that was a little piece of home always with me.

And now... it is summer and time to work on all the projects that didn't get done over the sabbatical.

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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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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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“HARRY POTTER” & THE DEATHLY STATUS QUO

At is in New York for the Model U.N. competition, but his article from last month seemed really pertinent. Some weird typos and things, but I love his take. This is the article he wrote while I was on the Greece trip, mining Nu's help for HP lore.

"Consider, instead, that the wizard world of Harry Potter isn’t a status quo worth returning to. The “magical and perfect” wizard world is based on class, racism and segregation. In a society where magic can magically fix and duplicate things, somehow there are still wizard families living in poverty. "

And because I posted it proud-mama style on FB, there were some sweet reminiscences about his playwriting at seven, and him asking me a question at the SALA D.C. conference in 2004, when he was five.

So far, the only bright spots in a day where both Jordan Peele's Us and and Bobby Mueller's magnum opus disappointed.

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Bloomin'

I needed a nudge* to be grateful that despite the record-breaking temperature of -50 today, I still have some blooms in the tea garden. Here amaryllis, begonia, and violets... elsewhere there are bougainvillea and hyacinth...

We were supposed to have people work on our kitchen counters this morning. Last night J called to ask if he could work in the garage because working outside would be too cold, and then I called him back and canceled because really, even the garage would not be enough to keep him and his crew safe. Things will be pushed back by a month now, but it's not like I would be able to enjoy new counters if they came at the expense of people's fingers.

*The nudge came from MaryAnne's pictures on FB this morning.

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On Being Sorry

I'm so sorry that the poet Mary Oliver died. 

I'm sorry too to say that everyone I follow kind of posted the same poem... and having so many people ask what I was planning to do with my "one wild and precious life" made me quite anxious. 

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Empowered Sunday

I started Michelle Obama's Becoming today for bookclub on Thursday, wasn't sure what to expect, but it's been lovely so far. I read some passages aloud to Nu, and we both chortled at the precise same place when she described her brother's tics.

                    

And then J texted me to say that although I'd missed going out with the group that had gone to see On the Basis of Sex with the group on Thursday, I SHOULD TAKE NU TO SEE IT RIGHTAWAY.  So Nu and I started making plans. And then we wanted Big A to come with us. He wasn't going to come, but Nu and I were all: women and other minority-centered stories aren't just for women and the minorities they represent, it's important for white dudes to see others at the center of the story too. And so, he came. Let's hope he picked up lots of tips from Martin Ginsberg. Ha.


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Umm Om

Made it to an early yoga class in the socks PJ gave me in Philly when we organized the SALA conference two years ago.



I'm not there yet, but... my. socks. were. a. hit.





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H A M I L T O N!

Someone was Prom King and picked prom night over Hamilton tickets we'd had for the past six months the last time we went... but he came this time... he loved it.









Same old balcony seats.  In fact, we looked up the old tickets and somehow, we'd ended up with the very SAME tickets as last time.

And apparently, the show makes me very emotional. First I stomped off when it was mentioned that I was walking slowly and then I left the fancy restaurant before we ordered because all they could offer me was rutabagas. So much drama for one evening!


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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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A Pattern of Tears

Perhaps we need to bring back rules about permissible dinner conversation again. On Monday, Big A made Nu and me cry with a story from the E.D. of a 10-month-old with a fractured liver (suspected parental abuse).

On Tuesday, I took over, getting people to read Ross Gay's A Small, Needful Fact  and Paul Nelson's An Elegy for Tahlequah's Calf.

We had a couple of days off for Thanksgiving with grandparents... but tonight, At finished the pattern off. As we settled around the table, he called this "the last dinner," horrifying me and reminding Nu that he would leave for college again in the morning.

Despite Thanksgiving, which was lovely, I think we're stuck doing family dinners wrong this week.

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NWSA-ing

"A" is for Angela...

Another for Nu's series in
Rad American Women.

#NWSA #Atlanta







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It's a dark and rainy day...

 

But here I am in Atlanta for my fifth NWSA.








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Sunday with Sonia Sotomayor

AAAAAAAAAA. SHE SHOOK THE KIDS' HANDS!! I made them shake mine right after. Haha.

She was here for the one-book-one-community MSU-Lansing event with her My Beloved World. The event was billed as Q&A only, but as she answered questions, she walked around the auditorium connecting with people. She is so awesome, and I kept tearing up with the knowledge that this smart, amiable, down-to-earth person is almost single-handedly keeping us from constitutional ruin.

She said she'd pulled a hamstring as explanation for why she was walking so slowly. I was bit taken aback when she first came in though and had already added her to my list of Supreme Court justices to pray for (#RBGForever).

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These are the three poems I sent DA

Muse, After Hours, Asifa.

Now we wait...

(Super full and very grownup day today: Search committee work and meeting, candidate interview, CASA visit, CASA updates, Tamil class, book club (Little Fires Everywhere), kid cuddle time, sending poems to DA.)

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Did She? Didn't She?

I took the day off today, found a magazine I hadn't read yet, and gave it a read.

Some of the news seemed... a bit off, so I checked the cover and realized that it was from 2015. 

2015!



Anyway, there was this article about Amy Poehler, at the very end of which she talks about wanting to take up drums in 2018.

That's this year... which is almost two-thirds gone. I want to whisper to her: Do it! Do it! You can do it! There's still time!








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