November 4

"Right this minute I am inspired, energized, well rested and focused. But I’m also sitting in a train station." 2007

1978

Saturday morning. Jim is at work (the Christmas push has begun) and I am on my own, with lots to do. So far I have walked Marley, made a list, and read about a serf’s life under Charlemagne.

If that noise I just heard downstairs was the paperboy, I am done for. It is, after all, nearly 8:30. The library opens at 10. I was going to get lots done before, but…I will have to be selective now. Besides my school work I have errands to run (groceries and vacuum cleaner bags) and a party to go to. A costume party. (How awful! I am reduced to going as myself in 1968, with a minidress, boots, and beads.)

I must do some real work now, even if it is just cleaning my work space and putting my shoes away. Why am I such a slob?

1979

Dress and ethnicity, using global view showing connections, rather than a series of disconnected units. Consider how it is made, and how it is worn. I need a separate place for all my teaching thoughts.

1997

The main thing is how will I nurture my soul and the souls of others this season? What do my holidays require? Probably poetry and music, mostly, and fellowship and food. This is the season for feeding the soul, to go into winter’s darkness and consider the essence of life. But not today, with the colors still at their peak.

1999

The semester whizzes by. It has not been so easy to create a schedule. It is crazier than I like, and there are no afternoon naps. Kiddo 1 is gliding along. Kiddo 2 is maturing before our eyes and becoming a surprisingly pleasant and responsible person. A real treat. I hold my breath for the teen years.

2007

Would my professional life be easier if I wore labels more comfortably? I am/am not:

A fashion historian

An American Studies scholar

A scholar of teaching and learning

And a few other things.

WTF am I?

Every time I go to a conference, I leave feeling as if it is too soon. If I could stay another day or a week, I could be able to spin my cocoon and have time to metamorphose into New Jo, the transformed and transformative scholar. I would be ready to finally give birth to that great work I have been starting all these years. God knows what it would be, because I sure don’t. It wears a different face every time. Sometimes it’s a novel, sometimes a book, sometimes a dynamic webpage. Forget it; it’s a phantom. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the hamster wheel, doing the same old thing to the same old students, mostly of them indifferent or resistant. Right this minute I am inspired, energized, well rested and focused. But I’m also sitting in a train station.

2014

Has there ever been an election season with more noise and less information? Sigh.

Comment 2024

2024 says “Hold my beer.”

2016

It was laundry day today. I originally planned to got to the movies and see Dr. Strange (in 3-D!) but the weather was just too fine, so I headed to the river instead.

Later, I headed to one of the two places in town (so far) that carries microbrews and had dinner. A woman who had been at my talk stopped by and we had a nice chat about being liberal in North Platte. Much to digest. At the river again, a poem arrived.  

Here is that poem, in case you'd prefer to read it than listen to my cold-ravaged voice.

How far has the river of time carried me?
How do I map the distance, the depth, the eddies of life?
Here I am, an old woman (or nearly old)
standing on the bank of the same river I knew as a child.
As if I never left.

Yet nothing is the same.
This water, 60 years ago, was in a cloud, or a jelly glass, or an antelope’s eye.
The swings in the park behind me are new. Safer, and smaller.Or maybe I am just bigger.

I’ve met a few old friends and driven by many more, in the graveyard.
What hasn’t changed? The sky. The smell of the river bank. The reddish brown squirrels.The yellow autumn.
The flow of the river, always south and east.
And somehow, in ways I cannot see or say, but only feel — me.

2024

I am spreading Shah Rukh Khan birthday over the week this year. Yesterday: the classic romance “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge”.