Things I Learned This Week

Braiding Sweetgrass, Virginia Woolf, Jill Bedgood, and My Kid

Education is the only thing that will save us. We must protect it at all costs. In the days, weeks, and years ahead, let’s keep lifting up the people around us, educating our children so they can learn from the mistakes of the present, protecting the weak, and building communities founded on love, acceptance, and understanding. Art, music, books, and movies are how we share empathy, expand our purview, and educate others. Creating and learning are a privilege I do not take for granted. My Ishiguro professor put it best that we read novels to experience joy. That said, here are some things that made me feel joy this week.

Robin Wall Kimmerer came to speak at my university. I am sure most of you are familiar with her runaway bestseller, Braiding Sweetgrass, where she combines her knowledge as a botanist with her indigenous wisdom of a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her inspiring lecture highlighted the vital nature of elevating multiple ways of knowing, and plants and animals are our oldest teachers. Still, I did leave depressed because I fear it's already too late for what she was talking about. And that sentiment certainly didn’t get better after Tuesday. In light of everything, it made me feel like my writing is insignificant, but then she said, "an educated person knows their own gifts and how to use them in the world.” So we keep on keeping on.

I discovered Virginia Woolf this week. Sad, right? Only took me 50 years. Doesn’t matter. I’d only previously read some of her short stories, and I finished To the Lighthouse and was blown away. My professor informs me that it's not even her best work (he prefers The Waves). I feel like an actual college undergrad now because this discovery is life-changing. I feel like she is patient X of literature. The nucleus that all other writing revolves around. Granted, I might have a modernist leaning when it comes to lit, but no matter. She is my new all-time favorite. Check out the clever animation of the only known recording of her on the BBC from April 1937. What should I read next, and who is giving me her diaries, letters, and essays for Christmas?

Shout out to my art professor, Jill Bedgood. She whipped out some of her watercolors in class the other day to show us, and if you know anything about my taste, they were right up my alley. Check out this watercolor entitled Aesop Audubon Intervention: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Reminds me of someone else this week. Just fabulous!

You never know what sort of impact you have on your children. You pour all your not-so-ancient wisdom into them and never know what will come out. After a month in Africa this summer helping with hyena research, my son returned and wanted to change his major from biology to art. As much as my son loves animals and nature, I’ve always known STEM wasn’t his entire future, so I am his biggest supporter. The other day, he sent me a project he’d done for a graphic design class. They asked him to make a series of logos for a dead artist, and he picked one of my all-time favorite children’s book artists, Jim Flora. Back when I was doing the vintage kids’ book blog, I read all his books to my son over and over. I’m glad it stuck.

While we're talking about my son, now that he is back on campus after a month drifting from the hurricane, tune in on Thursday nights online and listen to him on college radio WECX at 8 PM CT. He’s got good taste. :) His favorite album of the year so far? Night Palace by Mount Eerie.

Quote of the week?

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

‘Til Tuesday kids.

Burgin

(I’m finishing college at 50+, follow along and read my story here.)