Not Much

• Wow, less than a week to back-to-work, to teaching, that is. There are syllabi to revise, to submit to the department secretary; and there are things to think, things I will say, spell out, to a new crop of students. There doomed to be some words like cold water on dreamy expectations. 

• Has anyone heard of the book called The Gadfly? I'll come back to talk about what I know about it, and what it has to do with how much I knew of Catholicism, particular about priests and Confession as a teenager growing up in Communist China. 

• Things suddenly are getting busy. I took down the ornaments off the tree, removed the garland off the mantle, wound up the string lights, packed away the red-and-green thingies and ready them for another twelve months attic life. 

• At the same time I'm trying to keep up the daily painting routine. I'm painting light-hearted things, things "cute," even frivolous, making me feel like a "Sunday painter." I ordered twenty more miniature canvases to make a body of these things. I keep my fingers crossed that teaching won't get in the way. 

• Tomorrow I'm headed to a gathering of females instructors, to discuss the prior-proposed idea of forming a student club for female student artists. Why female only? Don't ask. Suffice to say that I'm being collegiate and amiable in reparation to my ugly reaction when it was first proposed to me. (Words like "gender issues", or "gender studies" bring out the worst of me) Maybe something worthy will come of this. 

• Once school starts, this blog will be hit-or-miss again.