jkcosmos

Trip to France will include more than Paris this time. Love Paris & have five days in this city, but going to expand my vision this time.

Snow, at first, how lovely – the clean, white fluff covering the grayness and covering the earth. Sweet.
More snow and cancellations of classes, shopping, coffee at a favorite café, seeing people, walking without the slide.
How much can a person take on when the snow is over three feet and an additional foot is falling, yet again.
The lovely part has long diminished and the value of the white-ness gone.

Longing for green, for bits of green perky and peeking out from brown branches and brown, dusty soil..turning darker and green emerging. When will that happen? How long to be in the dust of white, of snow, of dreariness.
Sunshine, not for awhile and blue skies…have turned white and a bit spooky. The whiteness of the earth, the sky, the covering of everything; total harshness in New England.

Longing for the sun, the yellow rays, the blue skies, the fluffy clouds, the café and the friendships & conversations – that being out & about brings to one’s life. I am not a solitary person and long for social, for interaction, for my students and being in front of my class. For engaging ideas with youthful, high-energy twenty year olds.
Another coffee, another look at the white and too early for a nap, or is it? Too late to be under the covers, or is it? Too tiring to revise my manuscript, or is it? Too boring to continue to watch programs ad nauseum and movies just not up to it. Cabin fever, we know the term and the feeling? The crunch in the gut that the whiteness and snow and low sky is not only covering the landscape, but one’s life.

Adjunct Faculty contribute a considerable amount in terms of content, context & critical analsyis & thinking – and yet…
And yet, adjunct faculty – those who provide services in higher.ed are not valued members of the academic community.
Rather, adjunct faculty are under-paid, not considered valuable by their full-time counter-parts and have little to no job security.
Retirement, holidays, benefits – all off the table.
Appreciation – perhaps, however, students only. Colleagues & admin need not comment & rarely do.

Epitaphio.

April 17, 1971 – Epitaphio – Cambridge, Massachusetts

Deep blue robes with dark folds,

Dark black hair – curling round his neck.

Penetrating blue eyes – absorbing all,

Alone – the only person in focus

As all the masses fade out in a blur.

The heavy Christ-tomb on his broad back,

His hunched shoulders bearing His burden,

The others hardly grasping on, as

He leads them forward-progressing onward.

The ceremony, gold-robes-candles glowing-

Ornaments – incense-jewels-chanting-

trivia!

Stepping off the curb, with nine young girls

Nearby-sirens sounded-

Trucks screeched by – as I held on to

Three crying, frightened children-

Girls in white-angels-pure and mild and lonely

Crying children—

My candle out-and up to look and see with

Tears in my eyes his shoulders

Bearing the entire tomb of Christ, as

It tipped- and surely Christ held on

With one gentle nudge – as the masses

Swelled and children cried and the

Engines roared —unnoticed he balanced

The tomb – directed the youth and

The ceremonies continued with the chanting

Of the dignitaries; the bishop and priest –

How everyone repeats them –

He does — I do, too, for Him.

Hello world!.

April 17, 1971 – Epitaphio – Cambridge, Massachusetts

Deep blue robes with dark folds,

Dark black hair – curling round his neck.

Penetrating blue eyes – absorbing all,

Alone – the only person in focus

As all the masses fade out in a blur.

The heavy Christ-tomb on his broad back,

His hunched shoulders bearing His burden,

The others hardly grasping on, as

He leads them forward-progressing onward.

The ceremony, gold-robes-candles glowing-

Ornaments – incense-jewels-chanting-

trivia!

Stepping off the curb, with nine young girls

Nearby-sirens sounded-

Trucks screeched by – as I held on to

Three crying, frightened children-

Girls in white-angels-pure and mild and lonely

Crying children—

My candle out-and up to look and see with

Tears in my eyes his shoulders

Bearing the entire tomb of Christ, as

It tipped- and surely Christ held on

With one gentle nudge – as the masses

Swelled and children cried and the

Engines roared —unnoticed he balanced

The tomb – directed the youth and

The ceremonies continued with the chanting

Of the dignitaries; the bishop and priest –

How everyone repeats them –

He does — I do, too, for Him.