What I’m up to
It has been one of those weeks during which I’ve had zero margin, but now it’s the end of the week and we’re at the beach for a staff retreat. One thing I love about my school is that our retreats are actually retreats, not meetings disguised as retreats.
It’s been unseasonably (and wonderfully) cold all week, but we had perfect beach weather today: blue skies, cool breeze.
What I’m reading
I read The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. I picked up this book because Gemma Chan had it in her bag in a What's In My Bag video and it piqued my interest. :) The book is about a mermaid who is caught by greedy tourists off a fictional Caribbean island then rescued by a local fisherman . It was unlike anything I’ve ever read — current, yet a bit fable-like in tone. (Now I like Gemma Chan all the more for having great taste in books!)
Right now I am reading The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a Gatsby-retelling from the perspective of Jordan Baker, here a Vietnamese adoptee. It features the poeticism of Gatsby… along with some magical realism. I wouldn’t have picked this up had I not stumbled upon a positive review — I just love Gatsby so much, I’m scared to ruin it! — but it is quite a delicious read. I have been too swamped to read very much this week, but I look forward to the few pages I get to each night.
What I’m thinking about
I’ve been thinking about Ukraine. I am grateful for poets who are able to put into words things I can’t:
"We Lived Happily During the War" By Ilya Kaminsky And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.
I think I’ve linked this before, but this Poetry Unbound episode unpacks this poem.
I appreciate this poem because it captures the guilt I feel all the time. I feel the guilt as I sit in my chair and watch the sun even as other people suffer. But.
My former student M. wrote to me and said, “I feel helpless as a person too. Our lives [are in the] hands of just a few people. I think love starts small, and even if things change politically on a large scale, at least we know we can still love the people around us on a small scale.”
You can donate to Save the Children here.
What I’m learning
I gave quite a nerve-wracking talk at my former high school’s chapel.
From my talk: “We — students, staff alike — get confused about how to be a Christian institution, because an institution can’t have a relationship with Jesus, which is really what it means to be [a] Christian.”
I’ve come to realize Christian institutions, especially schools, are often troubled because students and staff conflate policy and rules with morality or worse, Christianity. We have to be more careful.
I won’t link to the whole talk here, but if you’d like to read it, please just let me know.
What I’m doing
The secret project I mentioned last week was a podcast for our staff retreat. I haven’t done anything with audio (besides my textbook narration side gig) in years, and it was super fun to jump back into the medium. A colleague’s spouse came up to me after listening to the podcast and said, “Have I heard you on NPR? I feel like I’ve heard you on NPR.” He had no idea I used to work in radio, so that was affirming and fun.
What I’ve saved
I love this Twitter thread about how the response to NYT’s acquisition of Wordle is a case study in confirmation bias.
This Instagram caption (about why a writer calls his mother by her first name in his work) is beautiful: “I wanted her to be a fully fleshed out individual.”
More ways to help the people in Ukraine.
Until next week,
Kate
Guilt hits so often. Thank you for putting this into words.
Could you send me your script of your talk at MCA? Thanks