m'lady

There are large gatherings of people in Minnesota this time of year: the State Fair and the Renaissance Festival. It seems we generally have been making it to one each year, good friends accompanying us each time. I'm eating meat again, so I was particularly looking forward to a hearty turkey leg.


The animals are a great draw for me, even though I might be a bit too old to jump up and down at the petting zoo. There are also lumbering elephants, camels, giant horses. But I have a particular affection for sheep. I suppose we all have that animal, the one that we couldn't have for a pet, that we have a secret love for: mine are sheep. (And yes, also, birds, but I enjoy them mostly as motif and material in poetry.)


Kelly has a thing for pigs. Chris, it might be bugs, though I couldn't be positive. Anyone else? Have a quirky animal favorite? I've seen quite a few hedgehogs lately, Eireann...


It was a happily hot day, one of those last beating days of summer. I know I am the only one in this quartet that kept thinking of how Tuesday would be one of those Tuesdays like no other, the kind in which I start a new venture, and I am both thrilled and frightened. It's funny how the start of school can be so different in the K-12 setting than in the college setting; there is a certain amount of apprehension and buy-lots-of-supplies-ness to this, and with college, I simply imagine myself sitting in the lecture hall, the top of my head pried open, the words just drifting around.


This, along with last night's block party, are the last hurrah's, the traditional blessing of the summer, reflecting, loving, thinking of the way the seasons shift, telling snow memories, knowing that all this green, what the drought left, will be gone, and I will look back on these months in the blog, stare at the green pictures, think of flowers in bloom and the green, green of the grass in the background.


I wonder what it will be like to have forty some kids in a classroom? Lots of lecture and discussion with these kids. We have a stack of novels to read too, so there will be some independent reading time, though not too much, as we only have forty six minute class periods.


This is that time of year, the push-pull of distraction: the thinking of those personal happinesses, the best friend, the comedy of summer, the simple pleasure of sun and green grass, handmade paper and a printing press. And the thinking of what's so close to come: the slick pages of the textbook, the swipe of dry erase markers on white board, the staff meetings and the goals for school improvement, the celebration of literature with reluctant readers. The changes that occur in September.