If you came to this blog hoping that you'd find a meditation on World AIDS Day or the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955, head over this post on my theology blog. I did some brief researching of AIDS statistics, which are sobering: according to a UN Fact Sheet, 1.3 million people worldwide contracted AIDS in 2024 alone--that's just one year. Since the beginning of this epidemic, 91.4 million people have been infected, and 44.1 million have died of the disease.
Today will be a different work day for me. My students at Spartanburg Methodist College have a reading day today, followed by several days of final exams, but I don't have to report to campus. Grades are due at SMC on Dec. 8, and Dec. 10 for my online classes. So I have lots of grading this week, but it will feel easy because there's no commuting to Spartanburg.
This morning felt luxurious in some ways: I can put off my walk until later in the morning, so I've had a slower morning than most Mondays have been. I'm trying not to think about next semester, where I'll have a class that starts at 9, so Mondays won't be slow-paced at all. Maybe I will keep an extra pair of sneakers in my office and go for my walk later in the mornings on MWF. I won't get much in the way of hill training, but it would be good to have that option.
I will start grading later. Today is one of the few days where I don't have meetings or appointments scheduled, so I'm trying to savor the slowness.
I still have that hollow-brained feeling when it comes to composing poems, but I do have the capacity to read. Earlier this semester, I heard the author Richard Osman interviewed on NPR, in advance of the Netflix version of his book, The Thursday Murder Club, the book which is now a series of books. I hadn't heard of any of it before, but the interview whetted my appetite. The book is just as delightful as I hoped it would be.
Yesterday my spouse was sewing on the machine, which meant that watching TV wasn't really possible. I decided to put away my sewing, switch to Christmas music on Spotify, and sink into that book. It was a wonderful part of the afternoon.
Tomorrow I'll go get the next batch of books that I've ordered from the public library--next up will be Ian McEwan's latest, which has gotten great reviews. I'll read it first, since I suspect I won't be able to renew it.
A reading day, a holiday spent reading--delightful!
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