Despite the steep cliffs and the razor blade rocks, it's very peaceful up at the Poseidon temple over Cape Sounion. My favorite uncle sails, so I always say a special prayer when I'm here, just in case the old gods are listening.
Pic: I love this sunset, and Nu, and the fact that they have a soft spot for Pitbull (check the tee) because I once told them that my girlfriends took me to a Pitbull concert for my bachelorette party (and then to Scores, IYKYK). #GreeceI don't remember anything about the concert except that Pitbull was very sweaty and had to keep wringing out the towel he was using to mop up. We were right up front too. There are very few people whose sweat wouldn't bother me, and Pitbull was never on that list, so I was a bit worried it would get on me.
(One month since Mom's 80th birthday. No matter how much I distract myself, that internal calendar keeps track.)
UDL teaching workshop this morning--I was learning a lot, and contributing a lot. After watching the short documentary clip about kids with ADHD, I told a story about my babyhood that made the classroom go "aw" and chuckle. Except that after everyone had returned to the work at hand, I kept seeing my mom as an earnest new parent and I just... shut down and had to leave the meeting early.
(The story goes that I was not a good sleeper as an infant. I was hyperactive--and from six months onwards--very talkative. When my parents brought it up to the pediatrician, they said that it was probably because I was very brainy and constantly at work. That was so smart of the pediatrician, because it immediately mollified my parents and they never complained about my weird nocturnality again.)
Pic: Long walk-and-talk with JG in the afternoon. I inscribed two books (the Trans book and the poetry anthology) for her. I updated the annual report last night and was struck by how my scholarship, mentorship, and service for this one year would be a decent tenure-deserving record in most places. And the reason I'm having uncharacteristically braggy and uncharitable thoughts like these is because I'm so disappointed at work right now.
Yesterday I finished Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables in which after joking about how there are no ugly flower names people can name their kids, the protagonist nicknames a pandemic roommate with whom she is saddled "Vetch" (as in the weed).
Later in the day, trans friends talked another friend out of cosplaying a Harry Potter character. The friend said she wanted to "signal to people that I love the character, but reject JKR." And trans friends online said that every bit of visibility adds to JKR's support and coffers and that anyone engaging with the Harry Potter universe is tone deaf and ignorant at best and violently transphobic at worst. And asked how love of a fictional character could matter more than the real people she loved being harmed by JKR. Fair point. (This in addition to the racism, fatphobia, slavery, and other bigotry rampant in the HP books, of course.)
Because she seemed so crestfallen, I suggested Ursula K. Le Guin... she is genuinely wise, wrote tons, has several universes, is a gender visionary (The Left Hand of Darkness!), and the Earthsea Series is great for young readers. Then I reread the first book in the series--A Wizard of Earthsea--and was amused to be reminded that Ged has a friend called "Vetch."
WHAT are the odds of two Vetches in one day?!
The book reading and signing went fine. I worked myself up into a tizzy, and prepped in all kinds of ways, but Josh, the talented interlocut...
