I’m back from vacation. It was a good break. A lot of travel, a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of what some people call “quiet time.”
Today was the first day of the 8 week summer term at school. I’m teaching four sections of comp in 8 weeks, so saying it is a marathon isn’t the half of it. This morning was a typical first day morning full of technology malfunctions and unexpected issues. The strangest and most startling event was one of my students having what appeared to be a seizure about an hour and half into my second class. Updates to come.
___________________________________________________________________
Variation on a Sentence
There are a few or no bluish animals…
Thoreau’s Journals, Feb 21, 1855
Of white and tawny, black as ink,
Yellow, and undefined, and pink,
And piebald, there are droves, I think.
(Buff kine in herd, gray whales in pod,
Brown woodchucks, colored like sod,
All creatures from the hand of God.)
And many of a hellish hue;
But, for some reason hard to view,
Earth’s bluish animals are few.
Louise Bogan
At the Cancer Clinic
She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
Ted Kooser
Brianna Pike 