Massive Action Correspondence Day!

I am FINALLY done with grading (just in time for it to start all over again on Thursday).  But today I am taking a break to catch up on correspondence: all those thank you notes, "I'm thinking about you" cards, belated birthday greetings, and a few small packages that have been accumulating over the past few months.  I enjoy getting mail myself, and my P.O. Box has been quite empty recently.  Send me a postcard at P.O. Box 16294, Baton Rouge, LA  70893! I do take special requests, so if your mailbox has been empty too, send me your address in an email.

P.S. The Red Cross is running Holiday Mail for Heroes, so I'm including a link (www.redcross.org/holidaymail). Just watch the guidelines. I think they open all individual envelopes and scan for contraband, so cards, (up to 15 per sender) inscribed to "Dear Service Member, Family or Veteran," should be sent loose in a larger envelope. Do NOT send any personal information like an address or email address.

Ever have one of those days?

This picture pretty much defines what my life has been like the past couple of weeks.  NaNoWriMo has fallen by the wayside. Still digging myself out from the last avalanche of grading.  Sleep?  What's that?

On the bright side, I bought my ticket to Austria for Christmas (December 17-January 17!), I am taking this weekend to reassess priorities, and there were 100 pelicans flying over my apartment today!

For all the saints...

The beautiful flowers arrived at my office on Friday, a gift from my father.  The occasion?  My father sends me flowers every year on October 30 to commemorate my mother's birthday.  This year Mom would have turned eighty (she was born the day after the great stock market crash of 1929!)  Mom was an extremely talented and beautiful woman, artistically gifted with limitless creativity (who else would have dressed their kid up as Mighty Mouse for Halloween?!).  She wrote poetry and double acrostics (!) and made fried chicken and potato salad that people still rave about.  But she was also one of those highly versatile and accomplished people who can't live up to their own dreams and expectations, and she died in September 2000.  People tell me I inherited her creativity; I know I inherited her romantic view of the world.

Ave atque vale:  My mentor, Roger Hornsby, passed away last week. My relationship to Roger goes back many years, even before my birth. The silver Tiffany cup in the photo above was his present to me when I was born. Roger was a tremendous influence, not just academically.  He showed me Rome when I graduated from college and years later I showed him Vienna.  I last saw Roger in August, and he was still perusing the train time tables for Europe as his bedtime reading.  Those who knew him know that there was and will be no one like Roger Hornsby.

Also saying goodbye to Whiskey Widows:
Frances Paula Holliday
Dorothy "Dottie with the Body" Smith
and
Anna Kolder