☀️ happy Solstice all ✨

More than one holiday shopping email I’ve received this week has included items clearly meant as Valentine’s Day gifts? Bring back seasons please and thank you.

Going through student responses to a survey I gave all my classes this year (still in process) & one item jumps out right away: 71.4% of enrolled students said they prefer to read books in print (n=329) In addition to pushing back on AI/LLMs, feel it’s time to renew push back on ebooks for reading

A minivan. Decorated on all sides with Christmas light decals. Parked diagonally across 2 spaces. On the same row as an oversized luxury SUV also taking up 2 spaces. I’m just out for a post-grading lunch & it’s not peak holiday chaos yet but too many people seem off their moorings. (Some literally.)

Amazing tournament run by FSU & great goalkeeping performance to get by the No.1 seed Stanford. 5th National Championship for my undergrad school - which did not have NCAA women’s soccer at the time (!)

It was a deeply flawed time, but apropos of nothing, I miss 1994.

One of the long-serving group leaders of our UU study group brought several original early 19th c pamphlets from his own collection for our Spirituality & Reform discussion this evening. Remarkable how their debates on criminal justice reform, anti-poverty & anti-war remain resonant.

Thanks to my students for a great day yesterday as we wound down a truly exhausting semester - one class guessed my age as 5 yrs younger than what I am (!), another said they appreciated my “work ethic” With our profession under attack it has been harder to gauge what’s going well. Grateful for them

I've probably only bought a couple holiday trees in my adult life. Have a new screened porch and feeling vaguely positive after travel, so I thought, well, what do trees cost nowadays? My word. I don't recognize this world. Any tree $$ I briefly considered will go into refreshing my herb garden.

Yes Frankie. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/w...

Managed a 12-hr conference day at #NWSA yesterday, so this little introvert earned a morning beach trip. Perhaps not the best in PR but a nice public beach only a mile via shuttle from conference hotel; even managed to walk back across the inlet bridges.

👀

#NWSA begins tomorrow - grateful to have been able to come a few days early & walk around Old San Juan. Now in conference center vortex which is the definition of post colonial: hotels, casino, entertainment mega plex, massive fountains in various states of repair. Would read that essay.

Let's just cancel everything from now until the holidays. Everyone gets a six week sabbatical.

Hello. Florida? We could be doing this instead of “piloting” the use of radioactive waste to build roads.

Christmas music in this medical office waiting room when it is 80+ degrees outside is… not my preference. ☀️

Before/ After #Melissa damage in Black River, Jamaica. This is what Cat 5 hurricane damage looks like in a direct hit. Some chasers on the ground are comparing the damage to a high end EF-4 #tornado It’s likely gusts exceeded 200 mph esp since it was a strengthening storm at landfall.

CFP: “Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World” Conference at the University of Amsterdam Monday, 15 June 2026 How do material conditions shape how & what we know about the natural world? #earlymodern #C18L 1/6

Yeesh

Car battery decided it was done working this morning. Mine also running dangerously low this time of year.

🧵 Support links 🇯🇲 #Melissa

Gusts over 200+ mph. How do you even begin to prepare for that? 🙏🏽

"The NOAA aircraft left the storm early after experiencing severe turbulence in the southwestern eyewall." These men and women are not being paid due to the US government shutdown. Not to mention that according to AOML's director emeritus Robert Atlas, they are down 40-50% staff. #Melissa

Venice Bakery is remembering those that have died in ICE custody this year by adding them to their community altar for Dia de Los Muertos. By @eltragon.bsky.social

Oof. This is a massive storm. It’s far enough from us in FL but I have this muscle memory of dreading going to sleep and waking up to the next forecast. Safety & support to all impacted.

"Since our #Independence, Caribbean states have consistently refrained from permitting the hosting of military assets, which have the potential to lure the region into conflicts which are not of our own making." Full text of the former #CARICOM heads of government👇

The National Hurricane Center now forecasts Melissa to reach Category 5 strength before striking Jamaica head on late Monday or early Tuesday. An exceedingly dire, catastrophic forecast unfolding as Melissa crawls and rapidly intensifies on the doorstep of Jamaica.

Forecasts for #Melissa do not look good for our Caribbean friends in Jamaica and parts of Hispaniola. Let's hope the intensification cycle is at the lower end of what's possible.

Having contractors work on my porch and am close to asking for their Latin Jazz playlist (!) Always a roll of the dice with contractors’ soundtracks but theirs is top notch.

You learn something every semester. This term I learned I should specify for my 20th c class that Richard Wright on the assignment list refers to the author of Native Son and not the Pink Floyd co-founder. Noted.

Venice used to have a second church on Piazza San Marco: S. Geminiano designed by Sansovino you can see in this Canaletto painting. It was kind of a big deal; shows up in a ton of artwork. It was destroyed by Napoleon — to build a ballroom. Napoleon occupied Venice 1806-1814, eight years.

“Because a humanities degree is not tailored to a specific employment pathway, it enables graduates to excel in a wide range of careers. In a job market that is rapidly evolving, some business leaders argue that everyone would benefit from the breadth of a humanities education” bit.ly/47CZdy0

Bees going wild on my young Key Lime tree this morning

I hope the ghost of Dolley Madison is cooking up something big.

That feeling when Canvas/Instructure is “experiencing degraded service” (in this case due to AWS-East outage) and you start receiving panicked messages from students to “fix the assignment.” The power that is misattributed to profs/teachers is really something at times.

Orlando’s National Coming Out Day Parade. Busy day downtown with NoKings in a.m. at City Hall & blocks around Lake Eola set up for market, performances, with parade at 4. On this float, our Congressman @maxwellfrost.bsky.social on drums (facing other direction). Parade route more than 1.5 hrs long!

Advice from my dentist: “maybe you should try wearing your night guard during the day since you are clenching your teeth so much.” Apparently my bite is “intense.” Talk about signs of stress, then again, *looks around* Going to start winter break early this year & invite our times to do the same.

This is good reporting on the disaster in Alaska if you're looking for a reliable summary. This is a bigger disaster than I think most are realizing. 1500 people have been displaced by the flooding with an exceptionally complicated response and recovery. www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5kz...

Long live the Post Office.

Absolutely fascinated by these photographs of polar bears in an abandoned Russian research station, by AP photographer Vadim Makhorov: apnews.com/photo-galler...

The problem with writing is that it has to be done inside during nice weather

Winter Park / Orlando I am coming for you! Join me and civil rights icon Desmond Meade for a talk about my new book 'Just Freedom' on October 17th at Writer's Block.

Please allow this GenX girl her fantasy of flying to Milan when the school year ends to see @toriamos.bsky.social tour of new pro-democracy album

Op-ed: The tragedy of #Florida's famous Lake Okeechobee being listed as the most polluted lake in the USA cannot be ignored.. www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinio...

The truly perfect business model doesn’t exi-

The whole gathering of military leaders reminds me a bit too much of being in a hall of faculty members at some required meeting listening to slide shows on "active learning" where no active learning is taking place... although in this case I guess that is a preferred scenario.

Was just mentioning to @stacyparkerlemelle.bsky.social this is what we need to see this Fall. When below average is a relief.

This week. We made it? Spoke at local teaching conference today on embodied writing - went really well! And couldn’t help notice AI wasn’t mentioned once in Qs & comments. Also won via raffle a book of poems I’d been interested in, so a good day. Shout out to everyone making our broken world work.

Pope Leo XIV said a proposal to create an AI-version of him so people could have a virtual audience with the pope pretty much horrified him.