new installment of the sna poems--been awhile! mcgilvra woods, sauk cty, wisconsin #plantwatching #wisconsin #wildflowers #mushrooms jacobriyeff.com/2026/04/11/s...

cutleaf toothwort about to blow in sauk cty easter monday. #plantwatching #wisconsin

also, the crocuses have been kickin' for over a week. #milwaukee #plantwatching

virginia spring beauty in sauk cty. #plantwatching #wisconsin

man, signing off at least until easter monday. be well, humans.

the psychology of grading is funny. i'm genuinely interested in the rough drafts my students submitted, and on the whole they're really interesting. but man do i not want to do these last five. fighting the aversion. partially just b/c i let them submit digitally.

Some absolutely stunning Milky Orchids Neotinea lactea amongst the grassland and woodland at Monte Lauro, Sicily today. 5°C though! Brr. @europeanorchids.bsky.social

iuvencus and arator came in today from the library. resisting the urge to avoid all other work and just read them until i'm done. ugh.

The Sacred Oak Grove … … as far as I’m concerned. Primrose Unit, Southwest Wisconsin Grassland and Stream Conservation Area

considering "giving up" social media for the easter season.

my personal mission statement for the university: "The function of a university is to teach [one] how to drink tea." ~Thomas Merton, “Learning to Live”

skunk cabbage is having a great time. #plantwatching #milwaukee

wrestling quietly today with how in some sectors not liking computers is considered elitist. what a world.

it is nonsense. i'm also weary of the "leaving it to professors is confusing & chaotic" angle. we've been giving our own guidelines on tech & textbooks for centuries, that's just how it works. based on our pedagogical goals & what we think a human is, we decide how to teach. it's not weird at all.

oh boy, hatching an idea for a class on epic that takes the west's reception history seriously—ie, start w/ virgil b/c folks didn't know homer until the humanists, move to the christian latin epics (iuvencus, arator, sedulius), _maybe_ beowulf, then end w/ chapman's iliad.

"Jemez Falls" acrylic on canvas panel 12" x 12" x .17 Acrylic black, white, brown, turquoise painting.

companies want to _frame_ knowledge (experience?) as co-terminous with statistical probabilities extruded from vector arithmetic, with humans as (at best) curators of machine-derived content. reject their epistemological reductions.

in @marquetteu.bsky.social's library today to find books on: plant philosophy celibacy late antique latin epic retellings of the new testament. i love my work.

Nice to see colleagues in college writing recognizing that gen AI in the classroom is neither inevitable nor necessarily beneficial--as the research increasingly shows, quite the reverse! www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

snowdrops have been in the neighborhood for about a week! spring is happening. #plantwatching #milwaukee

just now figuring out that thomas traherne is a guy.

best books/essays on the importance of the humanist tradition in the 21st century?

"a canoe in the cherwel must be the summit of human happiness." —gerard manley hopkins, 1863

"The human being as filial child is the anthropological correlate of being as gift and love, its splendid attestation." nice. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/...

march is a construct, but kinglets are real.

There are several big sites with a lot of readable Old English manuscripts. This page of mine offers links to most of them ... alliteration.net/historical-texts/translations-oe/

it's fun that you can tell where in time you are when reading the roman martyrology just by the names from anyone "in anglia" in a given entry—if it's æþeltruda et al. you're pre-12th cent, if it's "nicholas" et al. you're post.

when people say "ai" is "everywhere," it makes clear the extent to which they look at the internet throughout their days.

"each age gets the anglo-saxon oral poet it deserves." —roberta frank. i love how this woman writes.

when do i finally make time to read #oldfrisian poetry?!

remember when i used to post very close-up pictures of things almost daily. and that was pretty much it?

_the seafarer_ and _wanderer_ this week in class. takeaway? you can cling all you want, ain't none of us getting out of here alive. #oldenglish

stapling my first paper exams in something like 7 or 8 years. feels very professorial.

The blue of evening

not only is it #twinpeaks day, it's also the feast of king st. æþelberht of kent. what a world to be alive in.

OpenAI is a menace. Two recent stories make that clearer than ever. One day you have Sam Altman denigrating humanity to defend AI. The next, WSJ reveals OpenAI could have alerted Canadian police of a potential mass shooter, but refused pressure from employees. That person went on to kill 8 people.

hear, hear!

itchin' to translate the #muspilli.

teaching _judith_ in one class and _beowulf_ in the other right now. feelin' fine. #oldenglish

I had an email exchange with a guy yesterday who insisted I was making a mistake not outsourcing my writing to an LLM. He said, "It knows more than you do." He couldn't understand that this was impossible because the work of writing is figuring out what "I" think.

i love being a professional academic. where else could a contrarian hermit find such acceptance and approval, i ask you?

for the love of all that is holy, does anyone have a clue when/how the "tu autem domine miserere nobis" response in the roman rite vigils got there?

'there are certain tastes, as of honey, certain humors and passions, as of the flesh. when those are either taken away or injured, notice how you feel.' —guigo of the charterhouse, meditations

or, the monk formerly known as witiza.

3rd before the ides of february. 23rd moon. +benedict of aniane, "the emporer's monk" (per the american cassinese ordo, tho the martyrologium romanum places him tomorrow)

Learning a Dead Language, W.S. Merwin (final two stanzas)

curious about the history of monasticism, the rule of st. benedict, & maybe even how it was translated into #oldenglish in the 10th century?! well you're in luck. @grahamscheper.bsky.social had me on his youtube channel to talk about all this, and it was a great time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ene...

ran into an acquaintance who said "hey, we should talk again sometime—about poetry, not artificial intelligence." i said, "yes, yes we should. wouldn't it be great if we all talked about poetry instead of artificial intelligence."

all right, virgil, i'll read your dang _aeneid_ again.