Saturday Snippets: the Mid-November Edition

--November 16 already--how the time flies by!

--Today is the feast day of Saint Gertrude the Great--one of those medieval mystics.  As one of the earliest female writers in the Western tradition, she's important to me, even if I don't always share her theology.  For more, see this blog post that I wrote on my theology blog.

--In two weeks, we'll be packing up and leaving Thanksgiving behind.  If your family is like mine, the leftovers will have been devoured.  We'll turn our faces to Christmas, which will be a comfort.

--But a limited comfort. I love the time from early October to Christmas.  As we get closer to Christmas, I feel a twinge of sadness that soon my very most favorite time of year is coming to a close.

--Down here in the southernmost part of the United States, it feels like summer.  Well, it feels like summer nights at my grandmother's house long ago.  We'd lie down on cool sheets that were crisp from being dried on a line.  We'd listen to crickets and enjoy the cool air that came in the windows.

--I was in the pool yesterday.  Yes, it's mid-November, and I'm still swimming in the pool.  I needed to cool off quickly so that I could get ready for work.  It's not a summer swimming experience, but it's comfortable once the shock wears off.

--Or maybe the more correct word would be refreshing.

--I'm having a good writing morning, although I'm not writing the two short stories I have in mind.  I heard about the comments about Janet Yellen's clothing:  she wore the same suit to this week's confirmation hearing that she wore when President Obama announced her nomination. Shocking!

--Women will never be able to win when it comes to clothing.  A man can wear the same suit day after day, and no one will comment.  A man can have a closet full of khakis and jeans and face no commentary.  A woman who tries such a thing will face a barrage of criticism--often from poorly dressed people.

--And those thoughts led to a poem!  The poem went to surprising places and ended up commenting on tattered underclothing as metaphor for the conflicts in the modern woman's life, the frazzling schedule.

--I also got a poem from a friend's e-mail.  His smaller condo is fighting the plans of a developer who wants to put up a huge project beside their smaller condo.  He sent me a link about sea level rise and voiced his wish that the seas swallow up developers like the one he's fighting.  And thus, the next poem, where the future fish talk about our Ozymandias generation.

--Two poems in one morning--that will always be a good writing morning.

--Before we get too much closer to the controlled chaos that can be Thanksgiving, let me take a minute to think about my online classes this week-end.  Let me make sure we're all on track as we approach midterm for those classes, which is Nov. 18.

--Mid-November today--45 days left in the rapidly closing year.  Hard to believe.