Day 45, April 30, 2020

Rain

Soon it will be consistently warm. We may even get to the point where we complain about how warm it is. Maybe it will be so sunny that I will not be able to tolerate sitting by the big picture window at the kitchen table and I will have to retreat to the cool isolation of the basement. But those days aren't here yet. I'm still wearing my down vest and feeling like Marty McFly in Back to the Future when Biff the bully mistakes him for wearing a life preserver. I wear my vest and reach down behind me to touch the radiator, to reassure myself that the heat is turned on, that maybe I will grow warm.

Running water on Dry Hill.

When I first moved to Amherst, we lived in a two bedroom apartment in Colonial Village. We had electric heat and were frugal graduate students, so the heat remained off, or nearly off most of the time. Maybe it was on just enough to keep the temperature above freezing. The good thing about a small apartment was that it did not take much to heat up the space. A frozen pizza in the oven gave the place a pleasant glow.

Just after the twins were born, my friend Ed lost his job and decided to move back to Maryland and asked if we wanted to take over his lease in a house in Shutesbury. It was a perfect arrangement, except that the twins were twelve days old. My friend, and the twins' future first baby sitter, Lianna was dating a UMass football player. She leveraged her powers of persuasion and we had a whole squad of very large young men come and load up and move in every piece of furniture we owned in a matter of hours. It was a marvelous thing to witness, and if I had been less sleep deprived, I might remember more of the event, but as it is, it feels like an impossible dream.

Shutesbury was cold, though we had a wood stove. At some point during the winter, we lost power and spent several days hunkered down in the living room, melting snow in pans, and camping by the fire. It was a form of roughing it, and for most places I've lived since, I've tried to make sure there was a wood stove for primary or auxiliary heat.

In contrast to my preoccupation with being cold, a few years ago we went on a trip to visit my daughter who was teaching English in Korea on a Fulbright. We traveled in the peak of a record setting heatwave just after monsoon season. That was a sweltering heat where the moment you stepped out of the air-conditioned apartment, you were damp and beads formed on the surface of your nose. Everyone in Seoul dripped sweat from their foreheads and chins. I suddenly realized I come from hot weather people. Korea gets both extremes, and can be frigidly cold in winter too. But thankfully, I've missed that experience.

Most springs and summers in Western Massachusetts are a perfect medium. A few blazingly hot and humid days, enough to remind one that it is summer, but mostly blessedly warm days with relatively temperate weather. The perfect temperature for floating on a slow moving river in an inner tube. So, I cherish that thought, that soon, my feet will cease to feel cold, I won't wear a jacket to feed the chickens, and some evenings, when it rains, I will stand out there and face the sky and let the drops land on my face.

Have a pleasant evening,

Leo

Franklin says hello. 

From Our Friends:

From The Montague Reporter:

This week's issue is out and available here.

From the Northampton Jazz Workshop:

A video of the full concert celebrating Ella Fitzgerald at Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

From EAB:

"What I learned about Latinx Student Success from 8 Hispanic-Serving Institutions"

From Richard Wilkie:

A fun video from one of his former student's mother making a COVID-19 elixir.

From The New York Times:

Professional dancers are taking to TikTok and putting the rest of the world to shame.

From Teaching Tolerance:

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Here are some resources to celebrate the diverse experiences of AAPI students.