Tuesday, February 18, 2020
February 16, 2020
Dreamed of buying stocks, The stocks mostly involved health care supplements or health spas, and the people selling the items and services came and demonstrated them to me. Must mean I should revivify my portfolio.
Read Perelandra for class tomorrow. Remembered why I loved it.
Wished-for good things are tortoises crossing vast deserts. Present joys are jackrabbits diving into the brush.
I painted a woodscape for my dining room, and was never satisfied with it. But this evening I realized it was a painting of the rising of the moon, and suddenly it was perfect.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
February 15, 2020
Woke with strange alacrity, the sky clear as it has not been.
Theater last night, Sublime at the BeBe. The play was thoughtful, skillful, and thought-provoking, its diamond-hard dialog delivered nobly by the cast. We’d been studying The Recruiting Officer in class, and the plays echo each other unexpectedly: Farquhar suspends action for the sake of pages of witty repartee, in his case bawdy. Lundblad suspends–pretty much eliminates–action for the sake of witty repartee, in his case philosophical. Not everyone’s cup of tea, as the sparse house witnessed. But I wonder WHY not everyone’s cup of tea? I thought it was fun. The same thing happens in chorus, when people whine that serious music isn’t “fun.” I think it’s fun. I thought Goodnight Troublemaker was fun. People are too finical concerning what they will allow to give them pleasure. Passed through the glittering Asheville downtown night toward my car, thinking I had seen something worth seeing.
Sang the “Star Spangled Banner” for the UNCA basketball game, an unexpectedly sweet experience. Taking into account the size of the venue, the girls’ basketball game was as sparsely attended as any evening of experimental theater. Find comfort there.
February 14, 2020
One of those nights last night. Missing Circe. Missing whole continents of my life– not even my life, continents that drifted by while I was stranded on a little island, watching them go.
Thinking of Valentine’s Day. I sent Jo-Jo flowers at his place of work. What? 28 years ago?
Turns out you can’t, after all, order NSDL through the publisher. Carlos cancels every order for some reason. That effort is completely lost. Something in me knew it would be. You keep plunging through, like a tattered bear through an endless field of thorns. In the midst of the thorns you cry out, but you’re in the midst, and nobody hears anymore.
This February is better than last February, I’ll give it that. Tangled with the Moffitt Medusa last year. . . skipping to the exit this year.
If only the wicked could be wicked in their own eyes.
Jakob Josef Orlinski on the Internet. Beauty.
Friday, February 14, 2020
February 13, 2020
Spectacular rain on the roof right before dawn.
Something big is on the roof. I assume it’s a bear. What shelter it can find up there I don’t know.
Pulled out of the AGMC fundraiser. We’ve traded striving for excellence to be content with a campy, jolly mediocrity. Too old to go with that now.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
February 12, 2020
Cloudy morning, the calling of crows.
Though Circe was the gentlest soul on earth, she must have repressed Maud in some way, for she is now settling into her role as sole chatelaine, occupying spaces she didn’t occupy, following me about and cuddling as was not her wont.
My credit card bill tells me I spent $500 on submission fees in the last period. Three times that on a sick cat; $500 on a new lap top which I have not yet taken out of the box.
Jeff wondered in the church kitchen why UNCA has become a second-rate enterprise. He’s running tests and making charts to see why our retention late is low and getting lower. He says, “I blame the new faculty.” I see how it is possible to blame new faculty, but I think the larger problem is that new faculty are not only not encouraged to greatness, but discouraged–at least by the culture-- from attempting it. When I arrived, critical thinking, intellectual courage, experimentation, boldness, high standards were expected. All of those things are perilous now. The cause of this descent is mission creep on the part of administration, which has exercised every opportunity to interfere with operations that in a good school would be strictly hands off to them. Administration has no right to a say in academic operations (though the faculty has an excellent right to say in administrative matters), and the reversal of this at my institution has ended its career as a meaningful center of learning. The problem is insecurity and uncertainty on the part of faculty, which makes us scamper like rats to what dark safety we imagine is provided. Insecurity on the part of the faculty is visible to the students, who then assume–alas, rightly–that they are attending a second-rather institution. Administration wants to run the university as though it were WalMart, a happy experience where every customer gets what she wants and never has reason to learn a thing. I’m sure this is clear, in various stages, to everyone. No one wants to say it, because Academic Speech and Freedom of Expression were among the first to go.
Cloudy morning, the calling of crows.
Though Circe was the gentlest soul on earth, she must have repressed Maud in some way, for she is now settling into her role as sole chatelaine, occupying spaces she didn’t occupy, following me about and cuddling as was not her wont.
My credit card bill tells me I spent $500 on submission fees in the last period. Three times that on a sick cat; $500 on a new lap top which I have not yet taken out of the box.
Jeff wondered in the church kitchen why UNCA has become a second-rate enterprise. He’s running tests and making charts to see why our retention late is low and getting lower. He says, “I blame the new faculty.” I see how it is possible to blame new faculty, but I think the larger problem is that new faculty are not only not encouraged to greatness, but discouraged–at least by the culture-- from attempting it. When I arrived, critical thinking, intellectual courage, experimentation, boldness, high standards were expected. All of those things are perilous now. The cause of this descent is mission creep on the part of administration, which has exercised every opportunity to interfere with operations that in a good school would be strictly hands off to them. Administration has no right to a say in academic operations (though the faculty has an excellent right to say in administrative matters), and the reversal of this at my institution has ended its career as a meaningful center of learning. The problem is insecurity and uncertainty on the part of faculty, which makes us scamper like rats to what dark safety we imagine is provided. Insecurity on the part of the faculty is visible to the students, who then assume–alas, rightly–that they are attending a second-rather institution. Administration wants to run the university as though it were WalMart, a happy experience where every customer gets what she wants and never has reason to learn a thing. I’m sure this is clear, in various stages, to everyone. No one wants to say it, because Academic Speech and Freedom of Expression were among the first to go.
February 9, 2020
Made it to the studio. I am the only tenant on the top floor now. Steve closed the door and wrote “Closed for Repairs” so that people wouldn’t come in and treat it as an abandoned building. The smell of the last flood was heavy, though the actual water had gone away. Finished my piece for John’s school.
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