The above are a few gifts to self.
Since my last post, I have celebrated a birthday, performed in the spring recital, and finished a terrific course on Dickinson, Rilke, and Celan given by Ulrich Baer at Roundtable. I have also seen two plays: Out Here at the Court and An Enemy of the People at Timeline. (Enemy is can’t-miss theater.)
This is also the season of mowing, trimming, readying the raised beds (and adding a few), and sowing the wildflower seeds.
No filters or edits applied — just so vibrant! Tulips of all sorts and hues are the main attraction at the Chicago Botanic Garden right now.
Oh, and the corpse flower.
New books, already shelved.
Today I’m reading The Enigma of Arrival (Naipaul), Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), and The Right to Oblivion (Pressly) and practicing the first two movements of Suite Antique.
The above are images I captured yesterday at the member preview of “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery.”
It has been warm enough to do some more spring clean-up in the yards and to continue expanding our grid of raised beds and pollinator pockets. The books pictured above, then, have been shelved for now.
Over the weekend, I finished two books for the Wilder seminar — By the Shores of Silver Lake and The Long Winter. I also finished rereading Beloved for a Roundtable course. Today I began The Enigma of Arrival (V.S. Naipaul; 1987) with APS Together and worked on the first section of Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf; 1925) for a new Roundtable course. This evening, before the final meeting of the seminar on the Old Testament with Marilynne Robinson, I set aside the required reading list for a bit and read another hundred pages in The Every (David Eggers; 2021), the follow-up to The Circle (2013), which I reread with the Commonplace Philosophy book club last month. Several participants recommended the sequel, and after a slow opening, I am now engaged (if pretty certain that this can conclude in only one way). I will catch up on this month’s book club selection, You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity (Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambro; 2021), tomorrow.
Pictured above are a few books I ordered after reading about an in-person Graham School course that interests me. I won’t be able to participate, but I plan to ask the instructor to share the syllabus.
Tomorrow night is the penultimate meeting of an NYR Seminar with Marilynne Robinson. This week’s reading focused on psalms. I’m also keeping up with the reading for Jared Henderson’s philosophy book club and the assorted courses I’m taking with Roundtable.
A blizzard warning just sounded on my emergency alert app. Coffee? Check. Books? Check. All will be well. In a neat readerly intersection of life and books, I just finished By the Banks of Plum Creek (Laura Ingalls Wilder; 1937) for a Newberry Library seminar. This, the fourth in Wilder’s series, ends not long after a three-day blizzard. Next up? On the Shores of Silver Lake (1939).
My image of one of the works of art at “Korean National Treasures: 2,000 Years of Art.”
Nerdishly 