Oh deer

 

In this sequence of photographs, my husband captured the almost daily pilgrimage of a family of deer, who rather nonchalantly cross our front yard on the way to our neighbor's bird feeder. As we approach the middle of winter, especially as hard and cold a winter as this one has been, deer will eat anything they find edible, including bird seed at feeders they can reach. 

The only reason we don't have deer pilfering our bird seed here is that our bird-feeding station, which my husband built shortly after we moved in here almost two years ago, is within our fenced-in yard. But we do regularly put out deer food for our resident deer families to help them survive the winter. And, no, they don't become so dependent that it affects their status as wild life since they never come to their feeding spot in spring, summer or even fall, only in winter.

This has definitely been the snowiest winter I can recall for us since we moved to Ohio in 2001. The meteorologist was saying last night that we haven't had a day above 30 since January 2nd. It's not above 30 here yet but it is supposed to perhaps edge above the 20s, which would make it the one seasonal day we've had in a long time. But if I thought February was going to bring relief and live up to its average 40s, I was wrong. Another Arctic blast is expected late next week and the temperatures will not rise from the 20s during the day and dip into the single digits at night. Brrrr, that's all I've got to say about that.

At school, we are now entering the 3rd week of classes and this semester has started much better than my spring semester 2009, which is a blessing. I have three good groups, with engaged and interested students, and I feel myself to be a lot clearer on what works, especially in terms of writing instruction, which I do a lot of in my 100- and 200-level classes. I'm also trying out a new approach in my American Fear class, and in my Hawthorne senior seminar, which is to give the students a grounding in cultural analysis. 

With that, I hope to stave off comments such as "I don't care what she [meaning me] says, Signs [the movie] isn't about race," or, "Why can't we just read "The Black Cat" as being just about a black cat?," or, "There's too much race and gender [read feminism] in this class." As we say back home, en guerra avisada no muere gente so we'll see if giving the students a clearer analytical framework up front gives them a sense that there is purpose in using race and gender as analytical lenses, even if, like any other analytical framework, including formal readings, it has its limitations

The fact that I have no new preparations this semester, and that, after seniors graduated and some advisees changed advisors last semester while I was on leave, I have come down from 20-25 advisees to about 15 or so, also has helped make the start of this semester less hectic and from-the-get-go overwhelming than last year's spring. I've also been able to continue working on scholarly projects, such as a proposal for a collection of essays on teaching Hawthorne and a proposal for presenting at MLA 2012, which I hope to submit by month's end on a paper comparing Hawthorne and Poe.

So far, I haven't missed my leave, which was such a gift at such a difficult time. For now, and I hope for the rest of this semester, I am still able to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Or, more appropriate to this climate, take the time to watch the deer and the crows and the birds as they do their best to hold on for spring, which still seems to far, far away.