Bikes looking down from 6 floors up
Looking out our kitchen window.

Spring is upon us. The temperature fluctuates quite a bit, from beautiful springlike temperatures in the 60s to windy, chilly days in the 40s. We have had one thunder storm last Saturday evening with a little thunder and lightening. Since then it has been very clear. The best visibility from our apartment window since we arrived. The humidity here has been in the teens and twenties since we arrived. It is supposed to be higher in the summer. We'll see.

Thursday March 27, That was written 2 days ago. I've been avoiding the blog for the last couple of days. But I told my students today that the only way to write a paper is to begin. When I approach preparing for a class, I told them, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, until I begin. Once I begin it's ok. But until the moment I begin there is a hump of inertia I have to get over. Since I happened to go out photographing on campus this morning, I was able to tell them that I had been putting it off for a month now. I have wanted to go out and photograph since the early signs of spring. But I've been putting it off. I haven't gotten up early enough to get the good morning light. Well, this morning I did. I told my students that the only way I can go photographing in the morning is if I get up, get dressed, load up my camera equipment and walk out the door. That's what I told my students today. What I have thought about since then is that I'm not going to become a writer by reading books on writing but by writing. It would probably do me some good to read a book on teaching writing, since I don't have a clue how to teach writing, except to have students write, read what they have written and talk to them about how they have written and why I like it or don't like it - and often my reason for not liking something is very vague or just that "I don't like how that sounds".

Speaking of sounds, I found a website off of NPR.ORG yesterday that is a short video of the National Poetry Contest in Washington, DC. This is a reciting poetry contest for High School students. It was so cool to see these students reciting poems with such feeling and depth of understanding. I would recommend looking for it under poetry on NPR and seeing what you can find.

We'll see how things went after I left the apartment in a couple of days. I finally got my camera out as well, which means I'm shooting film and waiting to see the results. If anything good turns up I'll post them next time. I do have some shots I took for our 6th floor window to finish off the roll I started at the Naw Ruz party. I'll include a couple of those.