Category: Personal

  • A view from inside

    The university closed a bit ago, and I’ve come home early, thankfully, to a warm apartment.  Things are pretty cold out, and lots of snow is coming down.  Predictions that there’ll be more and more overnight.  Perhaps I’ll have a day off school tomorrow.  The university rarely closes, which is too bad because, just like…

  • The Night Camera

    I come from a hunting family, but I somehow did not inherit the gene or personality trait required to have the desire to kill.  I didn’t suffer too much for this deficiency in my family because I did and still do love animals and nature, and love being in the woods.  In any case, my…

  • Comfort food

    I’ve been not feeling so good the past couple of days, which finally emerged as the sore throat that conquered the world.  It hurt to even swallow last night, so I made myself comfort food my adopted mom in Japan had sent me, and took the day off from school, and slept in, and am…

  • Despair is natural, isn’t it?

    Some years ago I had a course on the early twentieth century British novel.  For the class I was introduced for the first time to Virginia Woolf’s work.  We read To the Lighthouse, which I loved so much I began taking her other books out of the library and reading them despite having to go…

  • Potential blurbs?? (Updated)

    I happened to stumble into myspace’s professor grading system and was laughing at some of the report cards student have given some of my old professor’s until I realized I could possibly be on this site too.  Suddenly panicked, I searched for my name, and sure enough it was listed.  I have no worries, though. …

  • On getting what we need

    Today, just when I was going through a period of wondering if I’m able to reach and help my students as much as I hope to, I got an email from my supervisor in the English department, asking me to come to his office when I’m free.  So I wandered over just minutes ago to…

  • Finding myself in Japan

    Something that happened while I lived in Japan was the event most people refer to as “finding” yourself. A lot of theories that discuss what the idea or essence of a “self” is exist. Some proclaim the self is something you are born with, that it is an innate part of the human species, which…

  • An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton

    I wrote this entry at my old blog last weekend, when Hillary Clinton announced she’d be running for the Democratic nomination.  Since then, I moved to this new website, but today a comment from my friend Jeff Ford over at the original post has spurred me to repost it here, too, and I think I’ll do as…

  • The Beginning Place

    Like keeping a bound paper journal, the pages fill up, the spine breaks from all the opening and closing over the weeks, months, or years in some cases, and a new one must be opened.  This is my new online journal for Meditations in an Emergency, and also will serve as my home on the…