Early June activities

After graduation, campus changes. Half the students depart, and we are left in a quieter place as the rest of spring unfolds, as the days stretch longer and longer (it’s still light at 10:30pm now; I haven’t stayed up late enough to check, but I think we have now entered that period of light when it doesn’t become dark enough to see any but the brightest stars).

This photograph was taken May 23 at 9:09pm. The sun is still up. After this, the twilight lingers on and on. That weekend, and it’s visible in this photograph, the air was oddly hazy, as if blown in from a wildfire somewhere far away, although I’m not aware of wildfires currently in Europe. But the haze makes the air glow.

It’s not to say we aren’t busy. I’m still teaching. I’m giving feedback on essay drafts, writing reports, taking part in planning meetings for next school year, and we’re hurtling forward to get as much done before the school year officially ends a week from now.

Sunday evening a week ago, we explored an amazing little path that leaves right from our home in a direction we somehow had never gone before. It followed an overhanging rock along a cliff face where sometimes staff and students go rock climbing. It felt so strange to discover a place we have lived next to for six years and never visited.

From the cliff face in the previous photo, we hiked back out and around, and then up from the road to find the top of the same cliff. Here is my husband Taren. He’s not quite as near the edge as he looks, thankfully.

Writing-wise, I’m working on novel outlining. I’m going into copious detail (perhaps too much detail). It’s a story I began in Summer 2020, when Covid kept us from visiting our families, when we attended my sister’s wedding on Zoom. I’ve been working on this novel in bursts over these three years, written one and a half drafts, but found I had written myself into a corner. Now, I’m going back to map the large scale structure. Hence my post a month ago about the Snowflake Method. It’s continuing to serve me well. I shared some of my outlining with my writing group a week ago and they helped me keep generating ideas. That will be a good project for the summer.

At the end of a recent school day, a few students were looking excitedly out the window. On the balcony outside the classroom, they pointed out to me this oystercatcher chick and parent (later, I saw both parents on the balcony, but this is the best photograph I was able to get of the chick). I felt a bit concerned about how the chick will be able to get down to ground level (this balcony is on the second floor of the building). I imagine the chick will stay up here until it is able to fly down. These oystercatchers are some of our favorite local birds.

I’ve also found out, I’ll be taking part in an eight-week nature-writing workshop through Granta. I feel excited for this–to learn about the genre and work towards a piece of nature writing of my own. It will be meaningful to get some grounding in the historical forms nature writing has taken and follow that up to what it is today. I hope this is something that will inform my teaching as well as my writing.

We bought some kale seedlings a couple of weeks ago, and the other evening I planted them out. I should have planted them out earlier but didn’t find the time or energy. Here they go. Crossing my fingers. We’ve had limited success growing a garden here in Norway (it never gets very warm; the growing season is short; cloudy, rainy days mean there’s relatively little sun), but when we have, kale has been probably our most successful crop. We’re hoping that it will do fine on its own when we leave in July.

I had a piece of flash fiction come out in the literary magazine Chautauqua, which is a piece of nature writing, incidentally. The piece is called “Emerging,” and it’s about anxiety, and frogs. It feels good to see this come out. I get a lot of rejections on my work. I still find it difficult not to feel sad when they come pouring in. I’ve got my handful of pieces out there. I’ll try to keep focusing on that.

https://issuu.com/publab/docs/chautauqua_20.2_final/10

My story is on page 117 (using the page numbers within the publication, not the page numbers of the file). The whole issue is beautiful and well worth the reading.

I run a small ceramics activity with students every Monday afternoon. Usually I don’t make pieces myself, but this time, the two demo pieces I made worked out well. I went ahead and fired them. I love how this orange-yellow glaze turned out on this little teacup. I wasn’t sure how well it would work with the textured surface, but I like it a lot. The blue glaze on this footed bowl, though, bubbled really oddly. I wonder if the glaze didn’t quite mature properly. I may run it through the kiln again next time I do a firing.

*A beautiful little new wildflower I found in the last couple of weeks, with a goofy name: germander speedwell.*

The plan right now is to be here in Norway during June, then make our way to Italy in July, but we don’t have the trip planned yet. We’ll see where we end up!

Best wishes to you all, and thank you for stopping by,
Jimmy