March 28, 2018

The student I was worried about in senior seminar suddenly blossomed and produced good work. A palpable sigh went round the room. The one who stomped out and demanded “accommodation” in another class because I told a joke wants to read with the group next Sunday. I wonder if parents teach their children anything but the limitlessness of their entitlement. Took my Irish Renaissance kids to Jack of the Wood, where we read Irish poetry and discussed The Crock of Gold over beer and nachos.  Sweet. Today as I was heading our for High Five, I noticed that cars were swerving away from something in Lakeshore Drive. I got out and looked. It was one of my opossums, destroyed, coughing blood out of its muzzle but still alive. It sat in the middle of the lane, unable to move, behind its bewildered eyes maybe hoping that someone would put it out of its misery. No one did. I didn’t. I thought of running to the tool shed for a mattock, but I didn’t. I called Animal Control and just sort of stood there protecting the mangled thing until they came. I couldn’t even watch whatever they did. I consider this a horror and a failure. Wept bitterly, thinking of the confusion in its little brain, just pain and surprise, nothing to explain it with. Unless, as I pray with all my heart, the Great Mother was whispering in his ear, “It is all right, darling, come home, come home.”

Watched my best friend for thirty years ignore me from the other side of the café.  All things change and are built again.

Excellent day at the studio, much progress until the inflammation in my shoulders made it literally impossible to work.