It rained all day today, a cold damp drizzly day with most of the leaves off the trees. In the morning there was heavy fog; I always measure fogginess by whether I can see the hill off to the west of the Alderman Library as I head up the steps each morning, and today it […]
Displaying the most recent of 742 posts written by
Amanda
… I can’t be the only 32-year-old in this country waking up, rubbing her eyes, and realizing she doesn’t know how to break out of apathy, doesn’t know how to pitch in, doesn’t know the most elementary things about political action. Little Dutch child staring at the dam with no idea where to stick a […]
This is what my November 2nd looked like: 6:45 a.m. Alarm goes off for the second time, conclusively waking me up. I stagger out of bed to the sounds of NPR hosts saying "It’s ELECTION DAY!" 8:00 a.m. Breakfasted, caffeinated, groomed, and dressed, I head out the door, pausing to grab a warm jacket that […]
If you haven’t yet done so, just go out and vote already! I’ll be posting an election day diary tonight or tomorrow. I’m twitching with nerves today. But even if (heavens forfend) we have a repeat of the vote count fiasco of 2000, this election will be remembered as the one that got lots and […]
Michelle, earlier this month, posted about her disgruntlement with the kind of student whose only frame of reference is his or her own experience, and who is disinclined to consider any other possible frames of reference. As Michelle puts it: It seems that particular mindset just isn’t embracing one of the aspects of literature i […]
Bill Keaggy collects found grocery lists and exhibits them at his site. As a recent New York Times article on his grocery list collection explains, entire personalities can be pieced together (or not) from these found documents: ”Some people pass judgment on the things they buy,” Keaggy says. At the end of one list, the […]
Happiness is coming home from an afternoon’s grocery-store trip, turning on the Sunday Opera Matinee in mid-broadcast, thinking "hey, is that Strauss?" and then realizing, as the strains of Baron Ochs’s waltz emerge from the radio, that they’re playing Der Rosenkavalier, and one has arrived home in time to hear all of the last act. […]
Look, it’s a reference desk sestina! From TangognaT, who’s also written reference haiku. Marvelous. I am inspired. Henceforth my diary-esque posts will take the form of short autobiographical free verse poems in the manner of Frank O’Hara. (My lunch hour walks have been accompanied by lots of "I do this, I do that" inner monologue […]
This morning I woke up, dragged myself out of bed in the still-dark, switched on the radio, stumbled to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee brewing, took a shower — thinking, all the while, "Gee, I’m tired. I must not have slept very well" — and then put on my bathrobe, my glasses, […]