Sabbaths 2002 by Wendell Berry, one of the commonwealth's -- and the nation's -- most revered and prolific writers, is a modern-day book of hours. Within the hand-set, hand-bound and hand-printed chapbook that includes handsome wood engravings by Wesley Bates, 11 poems steeped in the Romantic tradition serve as artful prayers that record a sequence of Sundays. In observing the changing seasons, the poet's first-person narrator prepares for his own and nature's death.

The Herald
Learning to write legibly is hard work for most five and six-year-olds. Some children don't even get the hang of it by the end of primary school. But when almost every teenager in the land is nimbly thumbing text messages to friends while simultaneously holding a conversation with someone else, do they really need to learn to write things neatly down on paper any more?

the last period sophs are working now on their semester exam... i can hear the gears grinding whirring clattering along... i think i got the questions right... three brief essays for thinking and writing about the work we've done this semester...

mid-morning junk mail report: 520

Current Issue of The Threepenny Review: Issue 100

Precisely because many of us are out of touch with the rhythms of the natural world, we feel nostalgia for what we have lost. In A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture, Michael Kammen chronicles the evolution of our love affair with the seasons.

During a supervision period this morning I found myself thumbing through Wendell Berry's Collected Poems and landed on "The Birth (Near Port William)". It's a fine weird...frostian... take on the Christmas story.

Three guys are out on a cold night waiting for the birth of a lamb. After finding a poor man, woman, and child sheltering in an unused farm building, they hear a sound in the wind. One says it's not exactly just the wind:

It's the old ground trying it again.
Solstice, seeding and birth--it never
gets enough. It wants the birth of a man
to bring together sky and earth, like a stalk
of corn. It's not death that makes the dead
rise out of the ground, but something alive
straining up, rooted in darkness, like a vine.
That's what you heard. If you're in the right mind
when it happens, it can come on you strong;
you might hear music passing in the wind,
or see a light where there wasn't one before.

Elephants in a wildlife sanctuary in eastern Thailand are using their oversize bodies as road blocks, ambushing vehicles transporting sugar cane, tapioca and fruit...

junk mail count o' the day: 269

Mundelein has been inhabited since at least 1650, when the Potowatami Indians were known to have been trading with French fur traders. The first European inhabitants reached the area in the early 1800's. Peter Shaddle (for whom a street is named) was the first known settler, building a log cabin in the area now owned by St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in 1835.

One of the most disastrous bombing attack against allied ships during the entire war took place at Bari, Italy, on December 2, 1943.

69 Love Songs... on a first listen. this stuff is woah wonderful white soul noise. i'm. struck. dumb. struck. young. again in my ears. (thanks patrick)

Meatyard's expressionist style and use of staged scenes foreshadows the work of many contemporary artists, such as Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Sally Mann, and Justine Kurland. The most comprehensive exhibition of his photographs to date, Ralph Eugene Meatyard will be the first major New York City showing of this work. The selection of over 150 photographs was made by Guy Davenport, scholar, poet, and friend of the artist.

my copy of meatyard's Father Louie: Photographs of Thomas Merton arrived today... looks wonderful... davenport wrote the intro... and there are letters to/from merton... and r.e.m.'s comments throughout... good stuff

Links for Teachers

now... attend faculty/staff christmas party... hit the stores... read final exams... eat... finish letters of recommendation... sleep...

weekend junk mail report: 836

Kirkville - Book Review: Walden - A Fully Annotated Edition