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Women writers of the Civil War era, and why we need to write more actual letters

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I listened to a discussion/ power point presentation by a doctoral candidate whose research is focused on the lives of New England women during the Civil War, as evidenced by their letters. Her presentation was about on par with some of my students' work; yes, she's done research, but her suppositions are not necessarily supported by the letters, and her discussion was a surface analysis of her topic. I wish her well, but I'm really disappointed that it was not more enlightening. All she kept going back to was the fact that women had it financially hard (though the state of Maine had a process by which women with dependents could get assistance), they missed their husbands, and letters were a comfort.  Well, yeah. But ... I was hoping that her discussion would dig a lot deeper into the letters themselves, and not focus so much on her own assumptions about the lives of the women writers. I was looking to hear things like Abigail Adams' letters.  O well. Research being wh...
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A musing on Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man"--

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Snowing again. Sigh. We went from -22 on Sunday night, to more snow.  I'm reminded of the poem by Wallace Stevens, " The Snow Man ," which begins, "One must have a mind of winter" and then ends "And nothing himself, beholds/ Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."  The poem is one long sentence, broken into five three-line stanzas. Because it is one sentence, it contains, quite literally, one admittedly complex thought. What does it mean to "have a mind of winter," and why is it necessary in order to ponder the almost koan-like concept of "nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."  What is not there can be taken literally: we can see what is missing in the landscape, especially if it is a familiar one. But to behold "the nothing that is" might take a little longer. What is that? What does it look like? I imagine the snow covered terrain, the unusual humps and slopes of things now lost to sight. Is tha...
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The intellectual calcification of kids...

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Well, we had a two hour delay due to extreme cold. That made for another slightly confused day, but we managed. My creative writing kids are working on free verse poetry for the next couple of weeks; we started with prose poems. They seemed totally game to give it a shot. Today, we'll work on an abecedarian-- not really a fully free verse poem (but then, neither is a prose poem), but they are both good transitions from the form poems we have been invested in of late. We'll get to some wildly odd stuff soon enough.  The APLit kids are back in their shells, it seems. We read Benet's "By the Waters of Babylon" and they had no response. I mean NO response. Cracking this nut is getting harder and harder. I still need to finish reading and assessing their first round of essays, and then this one is going to be due on Friday. The focus is on the function of the narrator, primarily. We'll see how it goes. They are not really a particularly inquisitive or imaginative b...
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Baseball season...

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Well, it's baseball season.  The halftime show was glorious. The game, not so much. But the Patriots were honestly outplayed. Seahawks came to win, and they did. There were some good moments, but in general...yeah. Not this time.  I didn't eat. I rarely do when the Pats are playing in the Super Bowl (and how weird and kind of wonderful to say that)-- I have lots of leftovers for dinner tonight as a result. And I'm tired. Saturday took a lot out of me, and yesterday was an early day with a late night.  Today? Work, then home to do some chores and take care of Holly. It's Monday. No big stuff there.  And that is a good thing. Have a good day, friends. Hold your loved ones close. It's 21 below zero here-- stay warm. C
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Words from Isaiah for today...

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Today, the first reading in church will be from Isaiah 58: 7-10. I'm really glad I get to be the lector. It seems very appropriate for our current times: Isaiah 58:7-10 New International Version 7  Is it not to share your food with the hungry      and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them,      and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 8  Then your light will break forth like the dawn,      and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you,      and the glory of the  Lord  will be your rear guard. 9  Then you will call, and the  Lord  will answer;      you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression,      with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 1  and if you spend yourselves ...
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O my favorite jeans...

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Well, it happened. My favorite jeans tore. I can only hope it happened on my way home, or at home, and I'd not walked around all day with my undies peeking out of the tear. The back pocket caught on something.  So, I'll attempt a patch job. They won't go back to work, that's for sure, but I hate to toss a comfy pair of jeans just because they have a hole. I ordered a collection of "vintage" patches-- think Flower Child-- so it might be at least kinda cool? This whole situation reminds me of a favorite poem of mine, too, by Steve Kowit, titled " Notice. " It's one that I love to share with students, but mostly, I like the whole point of it, that nothing is guaranteed. That we need to be living aware of the fact that things can change or end at a moment's notice.  So, as the speaker says halfway through the poem: Take heed you who read this & drop to your knees now & again like the poet Christopher Smart & kiss the earth & be jo...
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Local news rant...

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Well, then. Ten below zero again. And at 2 a.m., the town crew had heavy equipment out scraping the roads, reducing the snowbanks. A very loud, growling scrape, followed by insistent beep-beep-beep , over and over again. Lucky for us, only about 20 minutes of it. I did get back to sleep. Thank goodness.  And thank goodness it's Friday. Work, then home to get laundry going, then getting Holly, and so on. I think it's a good night for take-out dinner.  The news cycle is a morass of evil-intentioned statements. The once-venerable Washington Post is now fit to line cat litter boxes. One of our residents in town advocated for a significant cut in the proposed town budget because they see a "slow eviction of those who built Littleton." Sounds like whining about a loss of perceived privilege to me. The motion failed.  I'm all for fiscal conservativism, but that's not something we are seeing at the federal level, not by a long shot. And the local budget has no "...
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