Up on the resumption tip

Resuming regular blogging, as we enter the first full week of the Spring 2010 semester. I anticipate that I'll drop-in occasional posts of the "In the Trenches" variety, but after 160+ entries, and a full two years/four semesters rotation, that topic feels to be reasonably well-covered. I expect I'll be using the Trenches series more for my own reference--akin to pulling out a last-year's handwritten journal, leafing through the the posts for inspiration or self-correction.

Would be nice to pick up again on the "100 Greats" series: we had the Reverend Colonel & consort with us this weekend, and he was kind enough to express that he missed 'em. I'd like to tidily complete that project: means I need another thirty.

Spring semester usually means a little less traveling, but a dizzying succession of events: Winter concert by the Celtic Ensemble of the "Hard" program on Jan 31; mid-February means the state Music Educators Association meetings in San Antonio; between Feb 15 and Mar 15 the general undergrad population is witless and stupid with testosterone/estrogen poisoning in anticipation of Spring Break, but before that we're hosting these Desperate Gentlemen (god bless my boss's generosity); April brings the sprint toward end-of-semester and is interrupted, right at the Ides of April/Tax Day, with the VMC festival weekend (Friday dance concert & Mr Darcy, Saturday afternoon picnic/festival, Sunday evening Celtic Ensemble "Big" program).

And then the semester's over, and I spend a week at U Limerick hearing recitals, and then Dharmonia shows up with the Ireland seminar kids for two weeks, and then I think I'm going up to Derry for a conference, and then it's Zoukfest, and then Mystic, and then Amsterdam, and on and on and on.

I have a great life, a privileged life, a life I fought for decades to attain and which I work 70 hours a week to create for my students.

But sometimes I get tired. Here's a poem that came out of the unexpected (not unwelcome, just unexpected) extra days in Cork:

River Lee

A sub-zero medieval city,
Leadening cloud,
Cold air damp on the skin;
Grit on the facades of the lowering Edwardian mansions,
And a magnificent sunset of turquoise and bronze;

And, silhouetted against the sky,
Gazing East,
Shrugging insolent shoulders,

The grey-hooded, hunchbacked,
Arrogantly indifferent Irish crows.

--coyote, Corcaigh, mid-winter 2010