Yesterday was a strange-ish day, an up and down day, but mostly up. I got to the imaging center early for my follow-up ultrasound after the 3D mammogram showed something that they thought was a lymph node, but they wanted to be sure. Happily, it was a lymph node; I am always deeply aware that for other women, it will not be good news. For me, for now, it was good news.
I stopped at the Fresh Market, as I did last year. In fact, when my radiographer asked me if I had anything fun planned after the scan, I said, "Well, I'll stop at the Fresh Market to pick up some treats, then I'll go to work, then I'll come back home and eat the treats. That sounds like fun to me." The radiographer said, "That does sound like fun." The unspoken part: fun for a day when one must work, fun for a day if the test results are good.
Then I went on to work. It was a good work day. I had a coffee with the mentor who was assigned to me as a new faculty member; we've been trying to schedule a coffee for almost nine months now, and it was good to connect in that way, good for me to move out of my comfort zone.
My nonfiction writing class is watching a movie this week so that we can write a review of it. We had a bit of glitchiness finding Grave of the Fireflies for free, but my tech savvy students did it by using Internet Archive. Why have I not known about this resource?
The movie is beautiful and profoundly moving, and also resonant in ways that I didn't expect, on a day when Israel breaks the ceasefire in Gaza and Trump is trying to broker peace in Ukraine. I hope that he brokers a strong peace that deters Putin, but I don't think that Trump is able to do that. I don't think anyone can do that.
Then I went to my American Lit survey class. We did a deep dive into James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." What an amazing story that is. As always, I hope I did it justice, but I am aware that to do it justice, we'd need to devote a month to it. One can't do justice to the literature in a survey class. But I loved talking about why it is important.
I haven't taught the short story in such a long time. Did I include it in the American Lit survey classes that I taught at the University of Miami in the early part of this century? Maybe. If not, I haven't taught the story in 30 years. It holds up well, perhaps even better than it did in 1995. Back then, it might have seemed that we had vanquished heroin. Now, once again, we have work to do.
I drove home feeling wonderful, a feeling which fizzled as traffic slowed to a stop. I'm glad that they are doing tree clearing by the side of the road, but I don't know why it has to be done in peak traffic time. It took me almost an extra hour to get home.
My spouse had made amazing nachos, so we ate dinner and looked for something to watch. We happened upon a documentary on the Avett Brothers which was much better than I thought it might be. It's the classic kind of documentary that explores the creative process along with the history of the group. I did some sketching and some writing to my senators and congressperson, asking to save NOAA. Today it's NOAA, and later this week--well, I'll figure that out later. Social Security? Voice of America? Some other institution that is decimated between now and Thursday?
We live in strange times, strange times that seem tilted towards evil. But James Baldwin shows us that all times are this way, and we cope as best we can, whether that be with the blues, with our family love, with heroin, with our other connections.
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