The last few days have not been good blogging days for me. I haven't been sleeping well or long. I have felt the pull of other work that needed to be done. I got distracted by tasks. This morning feels a bit better, so let me collect some fragments.
--Yesterday my American Lit class watched part of "A Raisin in the Sun." My students seemed more engaged with that play than they did with "Long Day's Journey into Night," "Death of a Salesman," or "A Streetcar Named Desire." Is it because of the racial themes? Better acting? Production values that seem more modern? I showed part of the movie of "Streetcar," and that really shows how production values have changed. Vivien Leigh as Blanche was almost incomprehensible. Part of it was her weird Southern accent, but part of it was the breathiness.
--Watching "A Raisin in the Sun" for the first time since the 1990's was sobering for me. In the 1990's, the film felt like a historical artifact, like problems of racism and sexism had been solved. Yesterday, watching the film almost took my breath away with how much sorrow I felt over how much ground we seem to be losing, in terms of human rights.
--I got up to see the lunar eclipse last night and never fell back asleep. It was not as stunning as some in the past. The moon seemed very distant, and if I hadn't known there was an eclipse, I might have assumed the shadow across the moon was a feature of light or cloud or my eyes being weird. It didn't glow red the way it has in past eclipses, at least not when I was noticing.
--We had a huge tree removed yesterday. A tree guy was in the neighborhood, and he knocked on the door to ask if we had noticed that the tree was dangerous. We had been worried about it, but as we looked at it, we saw that the rootball was rising, meaning the tree was leaning even more. As it was, it was supported by some of the trees beside it, but those trees are shorter and thinner. So, since the guy was already doing neighborhood work, we paid him to remove ours too.
--Once I might have shrugged and said, "Let's wait for it to fall so that insurance will pay for it." Now I know how long it takes to put one's life back together after anything that crashes into/through the house.
--I got my hearing aids yesterday. We spent time looking at colors for the metal part, trying to match my hair. The audiologist said, "You have great hair, by the way."
Here's how the wire looks going into my ear:
They are almost invisible given the way I usually "style" my hair:
--I am going to be patient as I adjust to being able to hear better. I thought the car radio would be a different experience, and it is, but not what I expected. I hear the road noise more, so I need to turn up the volume. Without the hearing aids, I don't hear as much road noise, but I can't hear the radio as well. As I got out my keys at my office yesterday, I was struck by how I could hear them jangle together.
--Here's how I think of it so far: the sounds are rounder with more dimension and tone. I am also having trouble with ear wax and equalization of pressure as I go across mountains. Sigh.
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