Portrait of a Week in Facebook Posts

Occasionally, I look back over my Facebook posts and think about how they represent a week.  Here's a look back at the past week:

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020:

In the concrete wasteland of the parking platform, some people watch apocalyptic videos about cryptocurrency or the new corona virus. I quietly water the butterfly garden.

One of my retreat friends made an astute observation:  "Although some might think this is a poem about butterflies, I think it's a poem about both peace and power."

Wednesday Feb. 12, 2020:

The Animal Anatomy and Physiology class down the hall is doing dissections. They're listening to Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand Up."

(I thought about saying more:  perhaps about how the song came out before most of the students were born or perhaps about the lyrics and wondering if the students thought about them.  But then I decided just to let readers/FB friends make their own connections.)

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020:

I have eaten all of the tomatoes

out of the salad
left over
from yesterday's luncheon.

And I ate some plantains too,
the crunchy bits, after I gave
the whole office
enough time to take
their fair share.

Forgive me.
The day is so long
and the treats so few
and far between.

(after William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say")

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I loved writing the Feb. 13 post.  I was startled to realize, however, that I have been remembering the William Carlos Williams poem wrong--I thought it started off, "Forgive me.  /  I have eaten . . ."  It did make me a bit sad to look around the campus and to realize how few people would appreciate what I had written without a lot of explaining of the original poem.

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On Saturday, Feb. 15, I watched some TV:

"I am watching an episode of "Jamestown," but although it's PBS, this is not our parents' colony! There's alchemy and homosexual love and tobacco fields and a chunk of a cinnabar rock and a whiff of transgender sensibility. This is not the settlement that I learned about in history class . . ."

and then the show got stranger, and I posted this:

"O.K., more than a whiff of transgender sensibility. Alchemy that creates a person that's both male and female? I feel I have missed an important plot element. First they're creating gold from base metals and somehow they ended with a character who is both male and female. What's next? Zombies or vampires? I can't tell where this show is headed at all."

But later, I watched a more normal PBS show:

"Order is now restored to my PBS viewing: 'Sense and Sensibility' with the glorious Emma Thompson. I remember seeing this on the big screen when it first came out. Glorious. I'll try not to post too many quotes. But here's one: 'A country parish is more to my taste. I'll raise chickens. Give very short sermons.'"

Much to my surprise, I watched the whole movie, which meant I stayed up past 11:00 p.m.  And I made this final post for the week:

"Emma Thompson is a goddess and a treasure--and here we are, weeping at the end of 'Sense and Sensibility,' both of us, spouse and me, and he hasn't seen the movie before. That scene, where all that is lost is restored--I have yet to watch that scene without being moved to tears (and yes, even when I showed it to my Brit Lit classes, most of us were moved to tears)."