Reflections: Brown to Gray to White

Getting older every day:

why does that continue to surprise me?

I am often startled by the morning reflection in the mirror, somehow not expecting so much white and gray hair each morning, though I have been graying since my mid-30s, even though I watched and assessed my father, brown to gray, gray to white.  I must be -- another surprise -- resistant, a slow learner.

I know how old I am; yet why do the visible signs surprise me so often?  My dad more or less told me I live in my head too much, and I guess this is all proof of that.

My dad lived to age 70, and every visit from age 62 on contained a bit of surprise for me when I would be faced with the brute fact that my father in the flesh didn't match the vision in my mind.  I think Dad-at-59, for some reason, held position mentally as the reigning image, even as he aged, moved into his 60s, became 70.

I am now 59 . . . so maybe that's why the needle is stuck on some record in this head of mine.

 Not so sure about the latest solo scissors-cut (nicked my own ear this time around), but it has always grown out before . . . .

LADY

 

Prep-Work: Survival Stories

 

Rain, Finally

 Though not quite enough porridge in the bowl.  More rain needed.

Honors 1B: Course Design?

I have to figure out my booklist for Honors 1B (intro to lit) next term, and I feel a little befuddled.  

I have ordered at least two new poetry handbooks from the local bookstore to help me, but the current miasma of pandemic + political chaos makes looking forward difficult. 

(Just venting, I guess.)

 

Berkeley Taught Me . . .

Berkeley taught me rigor and an independent voice.  Yes, I was expected to absorb the tremendous amounts of reading in each class, but I was also expected to have a critical sense and a critical voice, my own voice, in the context of each class.  I was not told to research the smarter person's findings, but I was given models of authority and was expected to find my place and my voice amidst those authorities, digging into and commenting on the primary texts at hand.  I am describing my first three years--freshman to junior--starting in 1979.  

Looking back, I so value how my professors were training me to have an independent mind, grounded in methodology and evidence.  In the fourth year, I was ready to face the deep waters of research in general and schools of literary criticism in particular.  I would not have fared so well without the support for my own findings and without all the practice in being an authority, at being a legitimate reader.

That education has deeply influenced how I teach, how I design classes, how I foster excellence.

 

Point Molate: Too Windy to Paddle