Post-Hiatus

Well, that blogging break turned out to be a bit longer than I expected! I don’t often take blogging breaks, but recently it was certainly warranted.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

* I serve as the faculty sponsor for the GSA at the private school where I teach during the day. This spring, our theater department chose to produce The Laramie Project, which garnered us a spot on the WBC’s protest calendar. I helped our students organize a peaceful event the students could attend in order to show our support for our production and community. We went through seventeen boxes of pizza, showed Milk and welcomed students from at least five different area schools. The production was a smash hit, the protest was present but small, and the students felt encouraged and supported in their encounter with this kind of protest and activism.

* I have written twenty-three poems as part of the Poem-A-Day challenge for National Poetry Month. I’m a few poems behind, since today’s the 27th, but I’m thrilled to have made it this far and still very hopeful that I will finish the month and the challenge by Thursday. Some of the poems I’ve written are rather workmanlike, but more than once, I really felt inspired, and I’m excited to sift through the pile this summer and see what I can refine and polish

* Assorted family challenges: I baked 24 bee-themed cupcakes for a meeting of Environmental Club where we had a beekeeper speak to the club, spent time with my sister who’s going through a rough break-up, and cheered my husband as he finished up research projects and moved into exam time. I also washed a lot of dishes and mowed the grass and watched spring flowers bloom. We had our first cookout of the spring time, and I made my first cream cheese pound cake (but certainly not my last!).

* I saw State of Play (meh) and went to hear David McCullough speak as part of the Baltimore Speaker Series, which was absolutely amazing. I’ve read his two prize-winning biographies of John Adams and Truman and also his 1776, but had never heard him speak before. My mother, who came with me, was especially thrilled to hear his praise and support of teachers. I also read The Clothes On Their Backs, which was great in a stark, British literary kind of way, and started reading The Ministry of Special Cases, which is evoking The Yiddish Policemen’s Union without feeling derivative (high praise if you know my love of Chabon’s work).

* I also went to many meetings, have a huge stack of ungraded papers, and have been observed teaching thrice, twice at my day job and once at my evening school. As the end of the semester is fast approaching, I can’t promise daily blogging again yet, but will be checking in much more regularly (I hope).