I wonder what At's Pre-K teacher thought

I dosed up on Lemsip (which is like Theraflu, but works better) and we headed out to Oxford for another day of lectures with Robert J.C. Young, who had been my professor and is a Fellow of Wadham College. 

I'm glad we didn't cancel. 

I thought the room he'd booked for us at Wadham--the Cecil Day Lewis Room--was a lucky coincidence. But as he told my students, he booked it precisely because back when I was there, that was where we had our seminars. (Cecil Day Lewis the poet is the father of Daniel Day Lewis the actor!)

I had to tell my students the funny story about when I took At to one of Robert's parties in NYC (after he'd moved to NYU). Hoping for good behavior, I'd told five-year-old At who came with me that it was for work (as it was!). There were a lot of British and European folks at the party, so there were a lot of those greetings where you hug and then kiss on both cheeks. Lo and behold, later that week when going through At's schoolwork, I came across this gem: "My mom went to work and kissed everybody." I always wonder what At's teacher thought of that.

Pic: The class with Robert J.C. Young (and C. Day Lewis on the wall)

"Boo, you 'ho"

I think I'm sick. 

Of course, the correct response to that (on our family chat anyway) would be "Boo, you 'ho" (without the hard "r"). 

It could be the pollen merrily floating around. I've dosed myself liberally with Lemsip and am currently loopier than ever.

Pic: Our picnic at Hyde Park today. People declaiming from set Hyde Park pieces (Orwell, Shaw, Marx, C.L.R. James, William Morris) or topics they're passionate about (The Globe's R&J, Bram Stoker's Dracula, guns in general.)

my real life is waiting

I can count on the fingers of one hand the days before we're scheduled to head for home! I'm trying to stay in the moment, but home is definitely calling. London looks like a vacation, but it's actually a 24-7 gig.

I miss Max, Huckie, Nu, At, and Big A fiercely. Pictures of their dinners together or Max asleep under furniture with just his tail poking out can make me happy... or cry.

And I can't wait to get back to routine. I've lost touch with my Duolingo, I keep forgetting to take my vitamins, my hair feels so different...

Things to do after arrival are beginning to pile up: Committee meetings, writing deadlines, final grades... Also: watering my zillion plants, Nu's graduation party, traveling to my baby cousin's wedding reception in NJ.

Proposal reviews for NWSA are due this Saturday, so I worked on those for a while. I'm almost halfway done and beginning to feel less panicky about being done in time.

Pic: Getting to tour Bloomsbury with Cindy and Mike was fantastic. Here we're at the bust of Rabindranath Tagore. The piece that C&M declaimed was the same piece I'd assigned for our reading this morning, so that was extra cool.

Big Maya and the Jinx

In the first week of classes while we were talking about cultural appropriation and the habit colonizers have of naming other people's stuff after themselves, the class decided that we should name something iconic in London after ourselves. Someone proposed that Big Ben should henceforth be called "Big Maya" and that kind of stuck. Every now and then there'll be a reference to "Big Maya" in someone's homework when I'm grading after a long day to bring me a chuckle.

This particular class has been a delight. They handmade me a Mother's Day card. They quote in loco parentis at me. They've taken to posting candid guerrilla pictures of me on the group chat with entertaining observations. All the graduating students have said how happy they are that their last class is with me.

I was just thinking I was so lucky when--at the very next sightseeing stop--one person did some yelling. Talk about jinxes. I was so surprised, I started crying (behind my sunglasses, luckily). I excused myself for a while, reminded myself that I was a Big Maya, that the young person was responding from fear, and that this is part of being in loco parentis too. All good now. 

Pic: Long bus tour today to visit Stonehenge (here), Bath, the Cotswolds, and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Marx or... Lennon

Happy Mother's Day! Mine started with a phone call to my mom and finished up with a long phone call with At. Texts, reminiscences, and photos through the day and the promise of a proper celebration when (if) I get back.

A walking tour of Karl Marx sites with some students in the morning. I was joking that we should guess if the groups gathering at the meeting point were there for the Marx tour or the Beatles tour. And clever AB ad libbed that we could call the game "Marx or Lennon." (Said like "Lenin.") I almost died laughing.

A visit to Shakespeare's Globe later in the afternoon where they staged Romeo and Juliet as a western... and it worked so well! In the scene where Capulet threatens Juliet (Act 3, Scene 5), he brandished his gun on his daughter and wife and it was such a great accessorial representation of his toxic patriarchy. There was an awesome moment of chemistry between Mercutio and one bright-eyed, curly-headed member of the audience we were all buzzing about in the interval as well.

Pic: The view from our seats. Mercutio did unspeakable things to the pillar we had to imagine from the look on everyone else's faces.

tea and ceasefire

Pic: A proper afternoon tea at The Orangery in Kensington Palace. Our day of indulgence!

And a good day to revisit the wonder of how the world has only two words for tea: Tea if by Sea, Cha if by Land.

Back home in Michigan, the morels are up. I want to tell Summer to hold back until I get back.

Feeling a bit lighter as we're are halfway through our trip and the countdown to home is ON.

And when I called my mom for Mother's Day, I heard India and Pak have a ceasefire! I'm so relieved!!

"Facts Tell; Stories Sell"

I'm a bit of a ninny when it comes to navigating my way on the Tube and around London. I'm so thankful for the students who have the knack for it and help seamlessly. 

But today was one of our days to head to Oxford, and I know my way around that city SO well. We had our lecture in a seminar room at Pitt Rivers Museum, which a student aptly called "hodgepodge museum." I mean there are cases generically titled "the human form in art" stuffed with artifacts from disparate eras and areas. Our lecture was with the wonderful Will Allen who gave us the nugget that is today's post title. When advising people on immigration data, he said he always tries to give them a story to take away. 

I had to do a fair amount of in loco parentis-ing today and hope it was helpful. Later, I snoozed off on the bus to students good-naturedly arguing about video games and then dreamt about them. In my dream they were racing each other down the sidewalk and laughing hard and my father watching them from the other side of the street with me, asked me in the indulgent, tender way he has if these were my kids. I guess they are.

Pic: Our class on the steps of the Sheldonian Theater. It is the center of Oxford (and where my diploma ceremony took place!) but the building is important to our class for another reason. It is where Chimamanda Adichie's deservedly viral talk The Danger of a Single Story was recorded.