Atalaya and Glazunov

First of all, the best part of living in Santa Fe has been never being cold, or at least not ever being cold to a degree that can't be fixed with knit slippers stuffed into summer shoes and pulling corduroys under a summer dress.

Other equally wonderful things about Santa Fe this summer:

Looking out my window in the morning and seeing the sun alight on the piñon trees, and the jackrabbits scamper from one tuft of grass to another.

Climbing the mountains behind St. John's College and watching the birds play in the chasms between the mountain masses.

Huffing and puffing as I climb the hill back toward St. John's after being in town, then turning around and being rewarded by a spectacular sunset.

The summer music offerings here - opera, community theater and chamber music.

The Quaker Meeting, which holds silent worship in a small adobe house and has a committed group of Friends that I have enjoyed being in silent fellowship with.

Classes, and classwork. I have loved my classes here. Today I finished my last assignments: a paper on perspectives on monarchy and other institutions of governance in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, Part I, and Edward II; a close-reading of James Baldwin's essay Stranger in the Village; a lesson plan to teach the two poems, "Birth" and “I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move", both by Louise Erdrich, a Native American poet.

Now that work is done I'm nearly overcome with choices - I can read whatever I want to! Well, I still have assigned readings for tomorrow, but I don't have any more assigned written work. Plus my brain is pretty tired of reading intense things. I can now return to Middlemarch and not annotate at all.

Atalaya is the name of a hike behind St. John's which I did this morning and last Sunday. It's really beautiful, and once you get to the top you can see the mountains on the other side of the ones we can see from St. John's which is incredibly satisfying.

Glazunov, as it turns out, is a Russian composer whose String Quintet op. 39 was the second half of the chamber concert tonight. It was wonderful. He was director of the St. Petersburg conservatory from 1905-1928, so exactly during the most revolutionary years, and the years after the Bolshevik revolution. What a time to be an artist in Russia! Some of the most exciting artistic experimentation taking place during the revolutionary era, and then a slamming down on the arts under Lenin. He left the USSR in 1928 and didn't return, settling in Paris. Listen to the quintet while you look at my random snippets from this summer in photo form.

Monica filling up on gas in Espanola - look at the price!!!!

Our first tailgate at the opera started in the rain, but it cleared up quickly. S. was the only one to bring his own wine glass. The rest of us had plastic.

In the middle of an "essays" class Jeff wrote this quote from Midsummer Night's Dream on the board. His handwriting is exactly like his personality - fills the room, makes you happy, conveys the energy behind literature. That is a student, not Jeff. The quote is: as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

I've been using normal pencils here for the first time in years. I love it! But it's very hard to find sharpeners. 

This is part of the mural along the wall at Monte del Sol Charter School, where I saw Much Ado About Nothing on Saturday. It says, "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." I concur, after taking three classes my first year at Bread Loaf, when I was told at the beginning of the term that I would thank them for not letting me do that.

The outdoor set for Much Ado. It was a small venue and small audience - I felt like a member of Elizabeth I's court!

The stage evoked the simple, outdoor Globe.