How’s it going?

As we slide past that million deaths staring us down even deeper like a heavy weight, Covid death, death in the Ukraine, queer murders and weaponized terror all pale to what clearly is the oppressive fate of citizens like you and I Under His Eye. As I sit writing in my place I wonder how is it going at your place? Lately, I can keep it together as long as a few activities happen on the daily. The musts of my survival are essential and all so simple. At least this is my vantage. The list begins with the outdoors.

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Earth Day

Easter tables all over the Northeast held brilliant bouquets pronouncing the return of Spring. Ours was picked with care and brought much delight to all who circled around. Truly, an easy delight for any and all after months of a black and white landscape. Today there is yellow and orange, pink and red and all those in between hues of daffodil, tulip and ranunculus in every stage of bloom. Today is the start of a world overcome by this joyous return.

Every year on April 22, Earth Day is celebrated by 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. It marks the anniversary of the beginning of the modern environmental movement that started in 1970, but is also a day to show support for the Earth and raise awareness of environmental issues,” says Google. As I stroll through gardens bursting with Spring it seems the least we can do is support this beautiful planet that has given us so very much, our every nourishment in fact. Today I am drinking in all those rich gifts.

Is there anything more spectacular than finding purple and green where yesterday there was only brown and gray? I find myself drawn like a bee just going from flower to flower to nourish me after this long winter. Eye candy. Sweet delight. All for free to gaze.

#investinourplanet is the Earth Day 2022 theme. How simple to hashtag a concept, yet so difficult to shift a world bent on destruction. Today I focus on all the easy beauty. So very grateful that it is indeed as easy as blooms on the trees and along the garden paths. How fortunate we have been for so many decades, millenniums even. Perhaps not so for those who will come after us, but for this day, with the blue sky, the fat robin hopping along the lawn, and the buzz of the bee chasing down each bloom, I will rejoice on this Earth Day.

And take in all She has gifted us. What a treasure to watch each April, life resurfacing like a goddess from the Underworld, this Persephone made visible, this hope realized once more.

 

How Can I Still Love Teaching You Ask?

How can I still be in a classroom, and still love teaching, even this year, you might ask? Well it isn’t necessarily due to anything particularly done by the greater public or certainly not all the ups and down of working around COVID protocols. There is just something that happens when, text in hand, I sit among readers and writers, and we talk complex characters or plot twists or even a last word, that just fuels me. We are in need of some hope, and whether plodding though Shakespeare’s Hamlet or being somewhat horrified by Shelley’s Frankenstein, or discovering the images and poetry generated during the short life of Basquiat, my student’s visions and imagery and words grant a faith in mankind I might not have found without them.

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