Big A spring-cleaned our study, scrubbed the tiled floor, and moved rugs around this weekend. The resulting palette is kind of all kinds of red especially around my reading chair, adorably added to here by Huckie carrying a red dinner napkin around...
I sent this pic to family chat with the caption "A Study in Scarlet," and was miffed no one got the nerdy reference.
Somehow, I love these colors and shapes together.
[MSU Horticultural Gardens]
Otherwise a busy, busy, busy day with meetings starting at 8 am and student grading, consultations, and some cheerleading/handholding throughout.
Because I was personally in a funk (™my dad) last week, I forgot to say how proud I am of my students who did a wonderful job with the WGS symposium and then over-performed on Honors Day despite all the pandemic-inherent obstacles. Hearing their idealistic and confident descriptions of why their humanities research was important made me tear up more than once. And one of my sponsees took the humanities Kapp Prize.
AK wrote me: You know your students today were rock-stars right? Your light as a teacher has clearly lit them up as well. While that's clearly a kind overstatement, and I don't want to take away from my students' clear sense of agency and genius--it nevertheless made me feel like I was doing good in this world. Even if only as an intermediary.
I was on my way home, but had to pull over to the side of the road when the verdict was read out.
Later, driving past Ithaca, I watched a police car speeding down a side road parallel to the highway until it disappeared.
Felt surreal.
[Mural: Aziz Asmar in Idlib, Syria]
I found some late hellebores and early daisies by the pond to distract me... Then work with students took up the rest of the day.
My social media is heartbreaking right now, with Indian friends looking for leads on plasma, drugs, ventilators, hospital beds...
My sister and I were wondering if our parents should get tested--I was worried about further exposure, but apparently there are teams that do home visits.
Late (very late) last night, a bookclub friend posted that their little one had broken their arm and that they were headed to the E.R. Big A was working in the ED, so I checked with him and gave them his work cell. This morning when I thanked Big A, I told him that when he's away, working nights, taking care of populations usually under-cared for, I feel I'm doing something good for the world too (although all I'm actually doing is wandering around insomniac and doomscrolling).
Definitely the highlight of my weekend.
I'm worried about Covid spikes in MI and even more worried about the tsunami of numbers coming out of India. Extremely worried for my parents who got their second vaccine shot last week, and are experiencing some persistent and alarming discomfort / symptoms.
I thought I would work in the garden for a bit when I got home... but I didn't.
I actually don't know what I did today. Ha.
But this picture on family chat made me chuckle.
These three had headed out to bring back some Impossible Burgers (there was an ad on tv), but the Burger King on Grand River Ave was just not there. How did we not notice?
Apparently, it has been gone since August?
