Wednesday, March 05, 2008

We did not discuss "May gray"--I didn't want to upset them too much.

Today the weather is more like what people imagine when they imagine San Diego weather. "Gloomy" was a vocabulary word today, so I taught my students about "June gloom."

Still reading Hannah Weiner and loving Code Poems.

My sister Sarah sent me a card from Adelaide with a lovely picture of a rainbow lorikeet on the front--and also one on the inside that she'd drawn. She inquired about Lester and asked if I ever "try to draw the birds I see." She signed the card "All the dearest colors of the rainbow, love, Sarah."

3 comments:

-kaplan said...

So about birds. I am teaching the most hilarious book right now, Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton's Who Would Have Thought It? (1872). One of the characters has devoted herself to raising pet canaries. When the Civil War begins, she has to choose between keeping the birds and volunteering to help wounded soldiers. She thinks that if she neglects the birds then a cat will somehow break into the house and eat them. She thus chooses to do her "womanly duty" and kill ALL of them with a bottle of chloroform. She spreads them out in rows and says a few prayers about the necessity of her actions. Very morbid satire of domestic fiction....

Oh, one bird does escape. He's rescued by the young Mexican girl who lives with the family.

K. Lorraine Graham said...

That does sound completely hilarious.

And there's always at least one jailbreaker bird in every flock.

Jessica Smith said...

your sister has some talent with words!