the call is coming from inside the Louvre

I was texting pictures of dogs in paintings from the Louvre to the family chat for BigA to show Max and Huck. I accidentally texted one to KO and asked her to disregard it, but she said, "Haha I absolutely will not disregard canine art!! 💕" so I texted her a slew too. I was going to start a thread of cows for my mom (our inside joke) and then I remembered. (Wild to think that my mom will be dead for the rest of my whole life! That part surprises me every time. Like ok, so she was dead yesterday, but today is another day?)

Nance and Jules, I was thinking a lot about May We Feed the King in all the rooms with paintings of still life/royalty! So many of those details were fresh in my head.

I'm so glad the FAA groundstop has been lifted and I hope it stays that way. I would have had a Menty b, as the kids used to say, if I couldn't come home. I miss my fam and fam snuggles and making my own food and my bed and my BATHROOM! (Is that last thing weird? I haven't heard other people say that. IDC, I do!)

Pic: The outside of the iconic I.M. Pei pyramid entrance to the Louvre from one of the fourth floor galleries.

forever France?

No one needed me for three hours after lunch, so I took myself off for a long walk. I lit a candle for my mama at a small church, found treats at a boulangerie, and found myself at the river.

I always find myself by the water.

When L and I stayed with SE in Yellow Springs this summer, SE told us that one of the times she chatted with my parents while they were walking and she was walking her doggo around the Friends Care pond, my mother had enlightened SE on why there was such a beautiful pond so close to us. "It's because Maya is a pisces," my mom reportedly said, "wherever she lives, there's always water near her." (And for anyone asking, no--our pond has not yet been fixed. The contractor fixing it has just asked for more $$ for materials :/.) 

I wondered how connected lighting the candle and ending up at the river were, given what the medium said.

On the family chat, my loving family was teasing me about being stranded in France forever because of the FAA ground stop, and pretending to book me a passage on a ship "it'll be just like all the people in the novels you read" they said. Good times (for some).

Pic: On the banks of the Seine, there are birds flying around the trees. My photos always look like the middle of wilderness, but there are houseboats to my right and left, and a Préfecture de Police canoe just around the bend. 

in the details

We're still working out details with presentations and planning timelines for the future. The project is "com-bat-ing" (haha) white-nose syndrome in bats, and I noticed several students had their nails done with bat motifs. Such a charming detail!

At the convention center, I noticed one team walk into the room with a lot of swagger--it turned out to be the team from Cornell. I wondered later if that had indeed been swagger or if people had been giving them heat about the Jane Doe case and they were awkwardly compensating for that.

My calendar was packed with meetings with people back home, several of which had to pivot to Zoom or FaceTime because of the Microsoft outage. Lots of small meetings, one big meeting which presents me with additional responsibilities next year, and one CASA Board meeting that was at 6 pm (midnight here). The director said that she would bring me a treat at the next meeting for being such a trooper, and I thought she was saying she wanted me to bring her a treat from Paris. Details! The future holds treats.

Pic: a bright blue sky and flag-lined skyline at the convention center.

all quiet on most fronts

A quiet day getting out of the airport, getting checked into the hotel, checking in on students back home, and remembering to practice my French.

In Atlanta last week, I did not leave the conference hotel the whole time I was there because the schedule was packed. But I think the schedule is a bit more judicious this week. We shall see.

Speaking of judging, I was invited to serve as a juror for an anthology of work by incarcerated poets, and I'm going to say yes. I'm so happy and proud about the people who wrote this grant.

Pic: A photo from the train into the city. Everything was a bit grey and grimy today.

headed for the revolution

I'm an incredibly lucky duck... I messed up the due dates for my external letter writers, but *every* one of them, got their letters in. I'm so grateful for these wonderful people in my life... superstars all of them. 

One of them shared their letter for proofing, and had spelled "humanities" as "humantities." I almost didn't want to point it out--because it kind of sounded like that's where you might go to drink the "milk of human kindness" lol. 

I taught my 8 am class in person because I didn't think my first-years would do ok without a check in from me and then pivoted to online for my other classes. Now it's off to Paris with the i-GEM team. Because of the recent student protests in Paris, the fam has been joking that I'm headed to learn lessons in revolution. 

___________

Pic: On MSU's campus. The message says "Do your part, DeFlock campus." On the ground, there is a blue tarp as if someone lives down there by the river. There have some murders of unhoused people by the Lansing river trail, so people may be moving to this side for safety. Life shouldn't be this hard. 

when night comes fast

duty spills, sappy and sticky as blood

rain is a wall sagging like sentences

suddenly alphabetless and guileless

rolling shut  against all statements

I just want to say yes, yes, watch me 

spin with love--revolving  evolving 

targets  may  come and  go missing 

but I just hear promises at the core

__________

Pic: A long walk with BigA, the leaves falling all about us, a shallow stretch of the Red Cedar ahead.

homeward bound

I get to spend two nights at home before I leave for another week-long work trip, so I'm going to make the most of it.

Why did you volunteer to go if you didn't want to, my sister asked on our video call this morning. Good question. In a small place, sometimes it feels like if I don't do it, it won't get done at all... and I am afraid of things coming to an untimely end. 

Also, I'm missing everything! Missing most of Diwali today and missed L's Blue Wave party earlier this week.

Pic: Party cake at L's. It certainly was a brave Blue Wave!

rising up to meet us

there is nothing but dusk and the dust to make it 

I marvel at the unreality of wonder in our world

flowing from one dim meaning to the next one 

you are afraid I will never make it safely home

scattered in the grass are the scars of reckoning 

how we are leaving this country of hesitation

to fly to a country of hope, our hands like wings

feathery and wide with prayer, holding nothing

only blossoming like blessings along the main 

all of us dreaming just as hard as we can dream 

__________________

Pic: I witnessed a sweet exchange on the bike path earlier this week.

doubt enters the room as if it were light

A lot of work-related travel in the upcoming weeks and my mind is on home.

I called BigA in a panic from the airport bus, because I wasn't sure if I'd shut the back door and was worried Max and Huckie would be in danger, if I'd turned off the stove... and a few minutes later if I'd shut the front door. Thankfully, it was a Thursday, so he was working at the addiction clinic and could check on everything on his lunch break. (Everything was, in fact, fine.)

Last night, I woke from a dream where my mom had changed/rearranged the coffee table and was finding my entreaties amusing... (I get my homing vibes from her, so she wouldn't have, but dreams are an exercise in the unexpected.)

Lots of good panels, a blogger meet, worked the caucus table, attended a college committee meeting remotely, and worked on the paper I'm presenting. NWSA seems quieter, but maybe that's just because many of my regulars aren't here this year. OR it could be because so many programs were cut last year that there actually are fewer folks around. Or some combination of the two.

____________________
Pic: The wobbly pic BigA sent me to reassure me that Maxie was safe.

We're not in Michigan Anymore

I headed out to the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) conference today. It's always right after the election, and I remember being in the airport in 2016, wondering how many of the people around me disliked me on principle, and then when I landed in Montreal where the conference was that year, the Canadian immigration officer joked about granting me refuge. There was so much impromptu organizing at the conference that year!

This year when I said I was headed to Atlanta for a conference, my first-year writing kids gave me a list of people to meet that included Playboi Carti and Lil Baby 😂 and I had to tell them I wasn't going to be hanging out at the clubs. (I wouldn't at all mind running into Andre 3000 or Childish Gambino though!)

I was laughing about this in my head, but then I remembered that I met Ronnie Devoe (of New Edition, Bel Biv Devoe) when I was at the NWSA in 2023!

Pic: The traffic in ATL is wild. My driver Y (rightly) complained all the way.

happy (and snarky)

A Latina woman was elected governor of Texas, a Black woman was elected governor of Georgia, A Native American woman was elected governor of New Mexico.

So many firsts!  First openly gay man (Chris Pappas)! First Muslim (Abdul)! First out Black trans woman in a state legislature (Jaelynn Scott)! It's wild that we still have "firsts." In 2026.   

Time to acknowledge the rush of hope and possibility Zohran Mamdani brought to politics and grassroots organizing.Time to thank Zelensky for taking out the Russian bot farms sowing discord leading up to the elections.

And it's time to really get to work. I hope the dems won't squander the moment.  I hope they undo the harm, prosecute the crimes against humanity and corruption, and really change people's lives. Please let's have no more business as usual, empty words, and being spectators to our own government. 

Why are Schumer and Jeffries taking victory laps for a grassroots movement they had nothing to do with and tried to deter every chance they got? They're so enmeshed with everything that's wrong here. (For starters, Schumer's kid is a consultant for OpenAI and Jeffries takes secret meetings with Kushner.) Enough. The best they can do is please step aside and pass the baton. Van Hollen? Ro Khanna? Elizabeth Warren?

Pic: My Voting sticker from yesterday. Sassy is how is feel. There was supposed to be a neighborhood bonfire tonight to celebrate (WILL LAWRENCE, OUR DSA CANDIDATE, WON!), but we got rained out... Boo.

so woke

I was cautiously optimistic and am now (way past midnight) heartened by the American decency that is showing up at the polls.

All the reports of people leaving their "I voted" stickers at the Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and other ICE victims' memorials is making me tear up... I hope we can move back to kindness--I'm so tired from the constant cruelty, and depravity, and chaos. 

And so many wins to celebrate--Deb Haaland, Amy Acton, Annie Andrews, Troy Jackson, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Sherrod Brown, James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, Chris Pappas... Still waiting to hear decisively about Abdul in our state. Angie Nixon called herself a socialist and nearly won in Florida. I'm counting that as a win. She could have really won too, if only the Dem establishment had extended any support. I really do hope Dem leadership is listening to what the people want and will stop playing their tired old duopoly games.

Pic: As the red and black stripes in the background might indicate, this is Nu's voting sticker. BigA and I voted after I got home from work this evening and went to stock up on emotional support snacks afterwards. Nu is off at the Will Lawrence watch party (that's not looking good, but we could still pull it off!).

a lack of an ending

When Nance recommended May We Feed the King, of course I got it right away, and then of course, I spent a lot of the book wondering if this is why Nance had recommended it to me. There's a part where the narrator talks about how people lose patience for grief after a year, and I was fairly certain that was one of the reasons.

But also it is so rich. The sumptuousness of the language is so perfect for the time period and the archival recreation it describes. 

There is a lack of ending in this poetic novel that I feel is me right now... especially today, which seems to be all about waiting for the future.

_______

Pic: A hazy, golden path ahead...
 

Oh, say...

...do you see the baby buck waiting for us by the garden shed at the end of the driveway? Max and Huck sure didn't. It surprises me how oblivious these guys seem to be to the world around them. They're mostly interested in family, other humans, *sometimes* other dogs, and like to chase squirrels and birds for fun. (And they're hilariously surprised when they find them stationary!)

In other silly baby news, I wished everyone a Happy November because that's something my mom used to do every month, and now it's up to me to carry that on.

May it be a happy November! (I won't be having a watch party, because when we moved into this house in 2016, one of our first parties was on election night, and... uh-oh, I might be scarred.)

Pic: Us returning home from an evening walk.