Poetry Month

The month is almost over, but I thought I would give a nod to National Poetry Month with a few poems from my class. Yesterday we talked about Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, and Coleridge - no time for Keats and Byron, and Shelley got short shrift - just a quick discussion of "Ozymandias" as an example of Nature's power and permanence. (One of the themes of the day is "Nature's constancy in inconstancy.") Here are the others I assigned:  

William Blake, "The Lamb ," "The Tyger ," "The Fly," "The Sick Rose"
William Wordsworth "The World is too Much with Us ," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "Composed on Westminster Bridge ," "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "

I've switched up the poems by Wordsworth in the past - sometimes skipping Tintern Abbey and instead reading "The Lesser Celandine" because we have a selection in our Norton anthology from his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's journals in which she mentions that he is working on a poem about that flower. I also have assigned "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal" about being rolled around with rocks, and stones and trees," but it's depressing, and points to a different theme, although certainly it's about impermanence. 

Next week we'll read some Emerson ("Nature"), Emily Dickinson, "A Bird, came down the Walk," "A SERVICE OF SONG,""There is no Frigate like a Book," "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "THE SECRET," "I Taste a Liquor"

Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores," "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," "Kosmos," " On the Beach at Night Alone," and Thoreau "Walking," and 3 chapters from Walden (I was assigning the whole book, but hardly anyone read it).  Then we turn to Gerard Manley Hopkins briefly:  "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "God's  Grandeur." I meant to also assign "Spring and Fall," but left it off because it is more anthropocentric than ecocentric, arguably perhaps. It is a beautiful poem, though, and sometimes I'm tempted to croon "Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?" to my own kids. It's strange and mournful, great for annoying teenagers when they are acting gloomy. 

Later in the term we will read Mary Oliver, everyone's favorite (sometimes I wish she weren't so popular because it feels trendy to read her poems, even though I enjoy reading them - just finished from the library her collection Blue Horses), Wendell Berry, W. S. Merwin, and Camille Dungy, whose poetry I was introduced to when she became poetry editor for Orion. Her "First Fire" is a good one for students (and teachers) in California wildfire zones. But my favorite is "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison." The title suggests a more ominous or foreboding tone, but the poem is a song of spring and full of delight - delight that I'm afraid strikes more at my heart's core full of homesickness for daffodils and crabapple trees than it resonates with my local students who don't know harsh winters followed by glorious springs. 

While reading an essay about minorities in the nature writing genre, I came across Tupac Shakur's "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." If I were better at popular culture, I would have known about this song and his album by the same name, and if I ever knew, I had forgotten. For some reason it reminds me of "To see a world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wildflower" by Blake - or maybe a similar poem? At any rate, I didn't include it in the syllabus, but by going down the rabbit hole of poetry by Tupac, I came across this moving verse: 

 (Links to an external site."

UNDER THE SKIES ABOVE: AFTER THE MISCARRIAGE by 2Pac

My child is out there somewhere
under the skies above
waiting anxiously 4 u and me
2 bless it with our love
A part of me a part of u
and a part of this love we share
will protect my unborn child
who lives dormant out there somewhere
Sometimes in my dreams
I imagine what it would be like
How could I properly guide him
when even I don't know what's right
Whether he is born in wealth or poverty
there will be no deficiency in love
I welcome this gift of life
given from GOD under the skies above

That's all I've got time for right now, but one of the parts of teaching I enjoy the most is rereading classic verses and sharing contemporary poetry with my students - it's fun to discover/rediscover insights and images. 

Birthdays and field trips

We've celebrated life around here the past week. In addition to the Seven Year Old's birthday last week, this week we celebrated Dad's birthday (he got new clothes for civilian life and... something I still need to buy) and the dog's birthday (he got an extra treat and a long walk) and a big football game and a first track meet and a last swim meet. We also made a trip to a local community farm - and paid $20 to do stuff we did for free a couple weeks ago at Nana and Pop's farm, but this was educational. 

After having six weeks off from teaching for Quad 1, I am not hastily updating my syllabus and Canvas course for teaching Quad 2. I have been trying to finish a book review that I started in December (how can this be so slow? I can only write about 2 sentences at a time before I get distracted. The problem is NO DEADLINE. Although at this point, the book is no longer new and the editors may no longer want a review. It's about postsecular representations of faith in young adult literature, and was actually a very interesting read - both in terms of defining postsecular and in reading about the ways YAL grapples with faith - in addition to all the contemporary hot button issues that YAL often features. The book is called Teens and the New Religious Landscape and is edited by Jacob Stratman if anyone is interested in checking it out. 

I also have not finished our taxes, quelle horreur! I have never been this late before; I'm usually done by February or March. I actually had them almost finished before 4/15, but I got hung up on whether our oldest can still be considered a dependent since he was in school full time in the spring of 20.  Since he filed for himself this year, I have to revise and take him off as a dependent. And that just didn't get done this weekend in between sports and class prep. 

And the other thing that is absorbing too much attention: Shopping for a mother of the groom dress. Can I complain about this? I don't want a formal - the wedding is at 1:30 on a Saturday in June. I don't want black, white, red, for obvious reasons, or pink, because I look terrible in most shades of pink, especially blush, which seems to be reserved for Mother of the Bride/Groom type dresses. I keep looking at vintagey styles, but my husband has nixed the few I've found in colors I like because of big bows or large collars or too many flounces. Since I've been searching all over the internet and physically shopped at Nordstrom's, Macy's, Nordstrom Rack, TJ Maxx, and Ross -because I hate spending a bunch of money - I'm hoping an ad one day will show up in my sidebar with just the right thing.  In the meantime, I also need to nail down the rehearsal dinner plans - I think we are hosting two events: one for the wedding party and grandparents who will be at the actual rehearsal, and then an "open house" type happy hour at the hotel for all of the out of town cousins who may be arriving. Since Covid numbers are down (and I have my first vaccine and my husband 2 doses. He got the "posh" Pfizer version. I got Moderna before I realized it wasn't as elite as Pfizer according to an article I read this morning. Who knew? But I suspected in the way everyone asks "Which one did you get?" a tone of superiority from the Pfizer recipients...), the wedding will be normal sized, but I'm not sure how many of our out of town family will travel, particularly the cousins in Germany and the other cousins who rarely travel even when we aren't at the tail end of a global pandemic. 

Then we jump right into planning the Change of Command/retirement ceremony.  Still no changes from last week, although he had an interview with a university hiring a facilities director. The university opportunities have been slim - several have advertised positions but are in a hiring freeze because of the unusual situation of the past year.  A friend who works with veterans commented that so much changes in the year after transitioning that sometimes staying in the same place reduces stress.  And granted, there are many pleasant things about living here, aside from the great weather, most comfortingly friends and a good parish. But we will never be able to buy a house in this neighborhood, unless some rundown 1 bedroom shows up for less than a million dollars, and we add a cardboard structure to the back to house the kids. But I don't want to move to another neighborhood if we aren't planning on staying more than a year or two, especially in this high-demand market.  So we'll see. Practicing Trust. Calling on Divine Mercy.  Hoping for a sign or at least a sense of peace.

 

These are maybes in the MOG dress category. Will florals be too distracting in photos?

Happy Easter!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!

I didn't remember saying that call and response prayer regularly until we lived in Virginia. It very well could be that at our previous parishes I just wasn't paying attention to its use, or maybe it wasn't used often, but I love that there is a common language for expressing the joy of the season.  Easter has arrived with warmer days and lots of pink blooms in our neighborhood adding to the sense of all the world celebrating new life now that people are no longer in hiding from the coronavirus.  Our celebration was small, in keeping with the restrictions that are still in place for military, even though my husband is vaccinated, but it was a happy feast day with our oldest son home. We had the traditional basket and egg hunt in the morning, although my daughter worried that I would never get the eggs filled (she lately has doubted that I can do the things I've always done without her knowledge of them - I never finish filling the eggs before midnight! And she has no idea how much fun we have eating jelly beans and drinking cheap champagne while we fill and fill and fill plastic eggs and then hide them badly.) We didn't go to the Vigil this year, because we were scheduled to serve on Easter Sunday, which disappointed the kids because they love the candlelight service. Sometimes we have gone to both, but decided not to take a seat from someone, or to sit in the parish hall at the Vigil since spacing regulations are still keeping the church half full. Our neighbor friends from college came over for an early dinner after brunch, and we all ate too much, but it was good. My friend made a Mediterranean lamb on polenta that was fabulous, especially after giving up meat for Lent.

Easter followed closely on the heels of a quick visit to see my family with our youngest in honor of our oldest son's fiancee's wedding shower. I wasn't quite ready for Easter when I returned, so I had to make some desperate purchases at the local Catholic book store and to rely on Amazon next day delivery for some quick gifts, but everyone seemed happy with their baskets and happy with the day in general.  Everything has been sneaking up on me lately - the shower itself seemed far in the future until the week before. I had purchased the tickets at bargain basement price two months earlier, so the day of departure seemed distant. As did our daughter's seventh birthday, that we celebrated Thursday.  As did the day of the start of my next class, which is now less than two weeks away.  I was able to schedule a vaccine appointment with ease at the pharmacy down the street for next week, when vaccines become available to everyone in California, so that I won't have to get weekly Covid tests since I will be in the classroom. Being eligible for the vaccine also seemed something far off, but here I am. My college kids have been joking about getting their microchips or 5G receptors after they've received their shots, and I am mildly bothered that their schools have practically made the shots mandatory, but here I am with an appointment and anticipation of being done with restrictions eventually, although we finally have enough masks in the house to wash and wear and not argue over "Where's my mask?" 

 I didn't mean for this to be a coronavirus update, but I've got some class work to finish up, so no more time to reflect on my sadness that Lent ended too soon. We now are hurtling toward my husband's retirement date this summer, and although he has no firm offers in place, he has had a number of promising interviews. This is a slow process, I'm realizing, which gives us time to continue debating the merits of where to live - whether we want to let our son who is a junior finish his senior year here, or whether we move in hopes of finding a better place elsewhere. Despite my dreams of better schools - and night and daydreams about new houses - I know that there isn't any place that is perfect. Moving our second oldest before his senior year worked out in his favor - he had a great year once he settled in and realized he didn't have to conform to any peer groups and could finally be himself. That took a few painful months. And we had a sweet baby for him to come home to in the evenings.  That baby is now a sweet seven year old who leaves little love notes for everyone around the house and makes little bouquets of flowers with stems too short to fit a vase, and who loves to be a helper and have everyone together. She cries when her siblings leave. She loves to travel. She loves to go on random errands. She mostly doesn't mind doing her school work. She loves her activities and her friends. Other than an occasional meltdown and regular complaints of loneliness when no one will play with her, she is a most pleasant child who now suddenly is reaching the age when she isn't technically a small child anymore. For Easter she wore the dress that I wore when I was baptized the Easter before I turned eight, when my parents came into the church.  Time collapses.

Easter Sunday

My baptismal dress made by my cousin, who is like an aunt. My first Communion dress and flower girl dress were never found when my parents moved, but this dress still looks fresh.

Peep donuts and St Catherine

The Easter Lily bloomed in time for Easter morning

 

Easter Dinner al fresco

Egg decor on the side of the house plus blooming climbing rose

A view of a water cannon salute on our flight - the plane we were on carried the body of a fallen soldier home to his family. 

 

The daughter's photos of flying

The honor guard welcome

 

Visiting the family and learning a little family history

Looking for spring wildflowers with the grandparents

You can't really see the tiny white blooms of Spring beauties and Dutchmen's breeches

Sunrise

Sunrise

Sisters after the bridal shower

Artwork while on the road

Sunset over forsythia

Playing "wild girls" with the cousins 

Finding the Ent in the forest

Trillium

Bloodroot

The brave cousin

Spring beauties

Hellebores

This years crop of calves

Bathrobe time was one of the best part of Nana and Pop's

Seven is heaven