Photos – Page 3

We went way up to the mountains of northern Alabama, to Monte Sano State Park. No elaborate rituals. No goat sacrifice. Just hanging out in the woods. Well, we did make those solstice stones earlier. But mostly we just hung out in the woods. I don’t think we’ve ever done that, as a family. It […]

Dear Persephone, You are now fifty-two months old. Our family vacation hasn’t allowed much time to sit and write, so in addition to being late, this letter will be abbreviated. One highlight of the past month was your dance recital. Since we live in New Orleans, this was a major outdoor party with food and […]

I was mighty excited to see the Transit of Venus this past Tuesday. I set up a tiny mirror on a tripod in our back yard, which reflected the image of the sun through our kitchen and down a short hall into my darkened office. This is called the reflected pinhole method, which is a […]

Dear Persephone, You are fifty-one months old today. It feels like it’s been an epic month in your life. But aren’t they all epic at your age? And in this city? Two big things: You finished your first year of school, and you got into a new school for the fall. For the past year […]

Workers of the world, take a break and celebrate International Workers’ Day or as I prefer to call it: May Day. It’s a day to remember the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. It’s good to recall that the eight-hour work day was not always a given, but something for which workers had to fight and […]

Dear Persephone, You are fifty months old today. To celebrate we counted to fifty together. The month got off to a rough start. You had a couple severe meltdowns while playing with friends. You’ve not had big issues with sharing before, so hopefully that was just a phase. We read A Little Princess by Frances […]

So for the last seven months I’ve been baking bread pretty much every week. It started on Lammas, also known as the Loaf-Mass, when Persephone and I baked mother and daughter loaves. After that I decided to keep baking for a while. Xy and I are in the habit of making sandwiches for lunch at […]

Dear Persephone, You are four years old today. So: Happy Birthday! But also: Happy Mardi Gras! The last time Mardi Gras fell on the 21st of February was in 1950, which was not only before you were born but well before I was born. These dates will line up again in eleven years, for your […]

Here I am on my 20th birthday, with my mother and sister. My hair was thicker then. That was 25 years ago today. For as long as I can remember, I’ve contemplated my mortality on an almost daily basis, yet I’ve often behaved as if I think I’m immortal. I’ve frequently envisioned myself as an […]

Dear Persephone, You are forty-five months old today. It seems like you’ve packed a lot of living into the last month. Especially around the holiday: We had fun making simple skull garlands out of paper and decorating the house. You had a blast on your first real round of trick-or-treating. (Afterward you wanted to wait […]

A bit discombobulated and disconnected for this recent holiday. Perhaps that’s because I was traveling just before — the POD Network traditionally has their conference at the end of October, and this one was combined with the annual conference of the HBCU Faculty Development Network, and we mustered our biggest contingent (four) ever. Wouldn’t have […]

Dear Persephone, You are forty-four months old today. I am forty-four years old. I guess that means I’m roughly twelve times as old as you. Your big dramatic moment of the last month came when you locked yourself in the bathroom. It was on a Saturday morning. You went into the bathroom, insisting that you […]

Equinox It’s a precise moment that happens twice a year, when the equatorial plane of the earth intersects the center of the sun. That’s the equinox. This year it came at 4:04 AM (local time) on the morning of Friday, September 23rd. For this moment only, the earth’s axis was not tilted one way or […]

Dear Persephone, You are forty-three months old today. You’ve just completed your first full month of school. Every day you are coming home full of songs and dances, art and ideas. You learned a new favorite phrase there too: “Everyone makes mistakes; that’s how they learn.” I had to point out that your mother learns […]

Yes, a month after the fact I’m still recovering from Tales of the Cocktail. Here’s my fourth and final installment. I learned some fascinating stuff from Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. For example, I didn’t know that the legendary founder of the Tiki Craze, Don the Beachcomber, came from New Orleans. (Wikipedia says otherwise but I have […]

I’d heard there was a marsh fire out east, but we didn’t smell anything until Monday morning. By the time I left for work, I was surprised to see the streets of Mid-City were shrouded in gray smokey haze. It was bad enough that I wore a bandana over my face as I rode to […]

Pistolette is quitting coffee for a couple weeks, so I thought I’d revisit the topic myself. I noted back in March that I’d started my eighth coffee reduction earlier than usual this year. Normally I wait until the weather gets hot, but this year I discovered the joy of dandelion coffee: roasted dandelion root + […]

Over the past year or two I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea of contemplative pedagogy. This is the notion that we can foster a more thoughtful way of living and learning in our students and in ourselves by cultivating reflective and meditative practices in our teaching. To this end, I’ve relished the opportunity to […]

Dear Persephone, You are three and a half years old today. Last year, on your half-birthday, I cajoled you into giving away two of your toys to Goodwill. I thought we should revisit that concept, so I showed you some photos from back then which I hoped would serve to get you in the spirit. […]

Today was Persephone’s first day of school ever. She’s going to a small Catholic school on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish. I never thought I’d be sending my daughter there, but it’s the same school where Xy teaches, so the convenience is unbeatable. There are precious few publicly-funded pre-K3 programs in town. We don’t […]

Tag: Photos

How We Celebrated the Summer Solstice

Fifty-Two Months

Venus in Transit

Fifty-One Months

Happy May Day

Fifty Months

Bread

Four Years

XLV

Forty-Five Months

Forty-Four Months

Balancing Intentions

Forty-Three Months

Tales Highlights, Part IV

Smokey Haze

Unreduced

A Necessary Failure?

Three and a Half

First Day of School