45 minutes
gathering twigs, mowing the lawn
75 degrees
Listened to a podcast (Nobody Asked Us) while I “mowed” the front yard with our reel mower, which does more pushing down grass than cutting it. Then gathered and broke down twigs on the side of the house. It’s the first day of public school today and the first year since 2008 that I don’t have a kid in public school. One is a senior in college, the other will start their first year in the spring. Mostly I’m glad to be out of this stage, but it’s still seems strange for it to be over.
Here’s something I’d like to remember from the wonderfully whimsical poet, Heather Christle. She’s responding to this line from an essay criticizing ChatGP
The point of writing an essay is to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get.
First, she suggests alternatives to “whatever job a college student will eventually get”:
- delighting in the diction and syntax of your beloveds and strangers
- recognizing the nature of lies uttered by those who wish to wield power over you
- composing nonsensical songs while puttering about one’s day…
Yes! These are all things important for an education in how to live a life!
Second, she responds to the strength/lifting weights analogy:
“Rather than relying on an analogy focused on strength, what if we chose to think of freedom, flexibility, and foolishness?”
freedom, flexibility, and foolishness
I love these ideas, where all three encourage possibility and openness and generosity, which are fundamental skills needed in order to navigate the divisions and anxieties and crises of the 21st century.
And, here’s a poem I read yesterday that I love — that last line!
Fullness/ Edward Salem
Behind eternity isn’t
more eternity. Nothing
lies in wait. Maybe you
think of it as a vacuum,
a void at the center of
the universe, a dot
that went all ways
at once, an asterisk,
footnote to everything.
Nothing is the Godhead
that gobbles the world
in one fell swoop,
but has no anus.