1966 (Mexico City)
I’m going to take typing starting Monday. Fiesta tomorrow night. I’ll be a wallflower, as usual. They’ll start out all attentive just because I’m an American. I wish someone would like me for myself.
1978
I’m reading Babbitt, which a marvelous book. It’s very subtle, and I think it’s growing on me.
1980
A very hot day. It’s nearly 100 out, and I am out in it, for the excuse of “fresh air”. The house is all closed up and quite stuffy. I figure about half an hour should get that out of my system. But I do need a change of scenery…it’s been hard to concentrate on my work after two days at the kitchen table. Usually I walk over the campus in the afternoon, but not when it’s like this. There is a breeze; it feels like the air that rushes out when the over door is opened.
Back to work.
Comment 2023
Really. Spending several hours a day on an electric typewriter in a nearly unairconditioned house. That window unit the bedroom was trying its best, but it wasn’t enough. A truly miserable memory.
1998
More clearing and clipping last night. I also “harvested” several mosquito bites because I stayed out too long. My hands are soft and blistered. My strolls through the neighborhood have become idea-gathering expeditions. I find I like distinct beds better than “naturalized” ones. I love warm-colors - yellows, orange, red, pink - and dark-colored foliage. Beds with 2 or 3 types of plants look nice, or beds with many types of plants but in similar colors.
Plants I like:
Vinca
Lily-of-the-valley
Zinnias
Marigolds
Hosta
Violets
Pansies
I saw beautiful tomatoes in containers at one hose, placed in a single row at the top of a slope like the one we have.
First, I think, I need to clear.
Comment 2023
Deer like hostas, too. My 35 years in that house were a constant struggle to wrest garden space out of our shady, sloping yard. Successes: tomatoes, peppers, various herbs. Failures: strawberries, rhubarb, cool weather crops in general because I never got them in early enough. Stupid DC climate.
2003 (Bozeman, MT)
One day into the Museum of the Rockies job, and I am feeling tired and a bit out of my depth.
Current situation, 2023
By this time in the summer, DC is deep in the doldrums, and my journals show it. Even in our nice air conditioned apartment, I feel lethargic. The northerners that we are, it was nine years before we got central air in our house, and ten years before I got our first air conditioned car. “It’s only a couple of months a year”. Yeah.
Today I spent several hours filling out the application to teach a noncredit course here. Here’s a taste:
Thoreau’s America: simplicity and Anti-consumption in American Life
The iconic American Dream is often expressed in terms of possessions. In this class we will examine the efforts, movements and trends that criticized, resisted or opposed excessive consumption. Sometimes these impulses spring from necessity (the Great Depression, wartime) but often they are rooted in convictions about the moral peril of personal wealth, social justice, or about environmental sustainability. We will consider historical evidence (Puritan sumptuary laws, utopian communities, 60s communes) as well as recent trends such as voluntary simplicity and “slow living”, from the perspective of historians, cultural critics, and those who have followed the “simple life”.
So excited!
I'm excited about your course here too!
I’ll be curious to see the syllabus, this is an intriguing course!