Colonial Wreaths and Snippets from the Past Week

My blogging time grows short, so let me capture a few short snippets from the past week:

--We made a quick trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, where my mom and dad live.  It was a good family reunion time.

--Last year I wanted to see the wreaths at Colonial Williamsburg, and we got there just in time to see the last ones being taken down.  This year we had more success.  I was captivated by the wreaths (look at the horseshoe crab shell in the one above!), but not so much by the crowds.

--All of the colonial wreaths made me want to do more with wreaths using decorations collected in the yard.  Maybe next year.

--It was astonishingly warm for late December.  Our luck will not hold in that area--frigid cold is on the way, and I do not look forward to it.

--Yesterday we had a non-Wednesday quilting session with the local Lutheran church.  What a treat to assemble this way one more time before my schedule heats up!  We got a lot done.  I am most impressed with our getting one room of fabric sorted into bins by color.  Of course, there's a whole other room yet to sort.  

--Today, at least one friend is coming over to play with Epiphany crafting ideas.  I am making Epiphany stars for this Sunday.  Fun!

The Work of the Syllabus Is Underway

I've been up for hours, but I've been working on the syllabus for my English 102 classes which start on Tuesday--Tuesday, gulp!  Actually my English 102 classes start Wednesday, but by Tuesday, I need to have all syllabi done for my in-person Spartanburg Methodist College classes and loaded into course shells.

I had been feeling this discontent as the morning progressed, and I took a moment to try to figure out why.  Were the readings a bit too traditional?  Maybe, but for this semester, I need literary works that won't need a lot of prep work from me; I want literary works that I've taught before.

I decided to try to move the research paper earlier into the schedule.  We'll do "Antigone," write about it, and then do the research essay, which I've divided into several writing assignments.  All of them will be done by early February, when students are still fresh-ish.  Saving all of this until the end was what was making me anxious.

What this approach sacrifices is letting students pursue a wider possibility of interests.  But I'm OK with that.  What I'm hoping to gain is to have fewer students crash and burn at the end of the semester when the research essay takes center stage in a traditional approach.

As I teach this class, I want to be alert for ways to make the class even stronger.  For example, I'd love to include a graphic novel, or a book about creating comics, but this term, I'll just let those kinds of ideas percolate.  I'll be sure to write down any ideas that sound promising.

For now, I must forge onward.  I've got an American Lit Survey syllabus to create.  I may wait to create a complete syllabus for my Nonfiction Writing class until after I meet with them on Tuesday.  There are only three of them, and it would be good to know what they would like to achieve this term.  Of course, they may be taking the class because of a lack of options.  There are only three of them, so we could do all kinds of interesting projects (go eat out together and write a review!  Create a graphic novel that explains a process!  write for the school's PR department!).

I love this time of the semester, before the work has gotten underway, when there's still so much possibility and hope! 

Three Specific Intentions for 2025

Here we are, the first day of 2025.  In my younger years, I'd be making resolutions.  Some of them would be broken by the end of the day.  By the waning days of the year, I'd have to look back at my list of resolutions to even remember what they were.

In the past decade or two, I've made resolutions in different ways.  I've "set intentions," but those are mostly resolutions.  I've chosen a word for the year.  I've made goals and lists and wishes and hopes.  But really, I do this all time.  One year I said I wanted to read 100 books, a specific goal which I found very motivating, much better than "eat more veggies."

I went back through some lists of January blog posts, and it seems like awhile since I've done any sort of New Year's Day goal setting.  I was intrigued by this blog post in the beginning of 2020, which looked ahead to 2030, and it's interesting to read the post here at the middle of the 2020's decade.  But I don't want to write about that today.

Today I want to set some goals.  I already do the basic stuff:  getting a minimum of exercise days each week, eating healthfully as much as possible, reading, etc.  Let me set some specific intentions.  At the end of each month, I will look back and see how I am doing.

Strength Training

In addition to doing the heart healthy aerobic exercise (150 minutes a week), I want to do more strength training.  Let me be more specific.  I want to do strength training 20 days out of every month, 10 minutes over an exercise session.  I had good luck popping by the Faith Center work out room during my walk.  I did that in August and September, and then Hurricane Helene upended so many of my plans.

Poem Writing

I am not feeling OK about how many poems I am not writing.  I do a good job of writing down fragments and inspirations, but I'm also aware that I have fewer inspirations and fragments in the past year or two than has been usual.  I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems.  They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished.  Fifty-two poems gives me space to catch up, and space to have a white hot streak that sets me ahead. 

Sketching the Human Body

In the next day or two, I'll make some sketches so I will be able to show how much I have improved by the end of the year.  I have lots of ways to improve my ability to sketch a lifelike human, but I want to concentrate on faces (both from the front and profile) and hands, and not in isolation, but as part of the figures that I draw.  Here's the way I usually approach my inability to draw faces and hands:

I want to improve.  This goal is nice because it will encourage me to sketch a bit here and there, and it could encourage me to go really deep.  I need a goal that's a bit less rigorous, a goal that encourages creativity.