Waltzing Matilda and Kazoo

Strictly for those that enjoy self-torture (recognize that I am sharing a very personal hobby with you):

Feeling Weird

Subway from Lee Bretschneider on Vimeo.

I promise to start writing again once I get back into the semester grove.  

For now I'll say that:  Art to Art is going well (Elisabeth and I have made neat, laminated schedules using clip art she found), my fish are growing by the hour, Stephanie is finally back in our lives, Jenna's got a boyfriend, I cut David's hair really, really, really short, my hair is growing at the speed of light, I'm still working on applications for graduate school, yesterday I started throwing on the wheel again and got back into the swing of things, there is already a lot of dried clay on my pants (which looks like mud and dirt to normal people I walk by on campus), my sculpture came back from Denver undamaged, I really like my art history teacher, I had to drop my installation class (sad :( face) for fear that it would interfere with my honors thesis, I feel very prepared for this semester, this blog is one year old (not today, I missed it's birthday), I missed Irina's "birthday" too, Jenna and Alexa got into NCUR which means Stephanie and I have the apartment all to ourselves for a few days in the future, I went to the gym yesterday and ran three miles very quickly, the ping pong tables were taken so I couldn't play yesterday, I can't wait until next weekend because I get to go home and celebrate my favorite holiday (Chinese New Year), I got a new kazoo after my other new kazoo was busted from me blowing/humming too hard into it, I'm waiting to watch a documentary I found in the library on noodling (bare-handed catfishing), and I'm finally taking piano lessons (I think I found my teacher on wikipedia).

Plants and Civilization

My winter term class is going to be fabulously entertaining and enlightening.  The book I'm reading right now (Botany of Desire) is a fun read and I'm so excited to see what this mini-semester brings.  

For a brief moment in class my professor talked about Joyce Kilmer and his poem, Tree.  So, I looked it up (because, despite being a famous poem, yours truly had never come across it).  Here it is:

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Also noteworthy, my professor gave us a brief history about himself.  One of his power point lecture slides was titled "Who am I?" and upon clicking the space bar of his laptop, a picture of him as a teen zoomed onto the screen.  It said "Rattlesnake-Killer".  From there, he became a "Bored-Banker" and is now a present and self-identified "Tree-Hugger".  Let me just say that once you see an old photograph of your teacher holding a dead rattlesnake from the estimated seventies, you can't help but warm yourself to his/her friendship and, in my context, to their knowledge on plants and civilization.

Today's class ended with our group of students walking outside into the frigid cold, led by professor, to a pine tree where we heard some rem(b)arkable history about North Carolina's state tree.

Now I'm off to acquire transportation to buy a kazoo.

Love,

Monica