Tag: Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro

Cloister Commentary, Day 65: Chez Nicole

 

Breakfast – toasted avocado pita with purple cabbage and green onion.

Lunch – fresh tomatoes from Thoenen Produce (Osage County), Blue Plate mayo, and Wickles Wicked pickle chips on white bread.

Dinner – totally, arrogantly, deliciously vegan gumbo with a Happy Hollow Farms (Jamestown) butter leaf lettuce salad.

No, we ate at Chez Nicole all three meals, but thanks for asking!

I also finished the longest “short book” I’ve ever read, Brazilian novelist João Ubaldo Ribeiro‘s Sergeant Getulio. 140 pages of nearly-fine print taken almost to the page margins, in stream-of-consciousness narration with minimal paragraphing, it was a wild Rabelaisian ride that put me through my paces.

We closed the day with Netflix’s Studio 54 documentary, which revealed a very unique friendship and told its story solidly, even bravely. I didn’t hate disco back then–in fact, verily I did disco myself–and we both love it now. It’d be nice to be able to gyrate and sweat in the midst of one’s people right now.

Oh yes: Steve Earle’s Ghosts of West Virginia is in the year’s Top 10 best albums, just so you know.

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

“Different” is just fine.

Cloister Commentary, Day 62: Spartan Strong, Class o’ ’20!

Well, we didn’t go on a Vehicular Victory Tour for Battle Valedictorians yesterday–but we did mirror the InnerTubes to our TV and admiringly watch the school’s virtual academic awards assembly. Besides getting to celebrate the recipients of a nursing scholarship we’ve given for seven years in Nicole’s mom Lynda’s memory, we were gobsmacked by the sheer brains, skill, and diligence of the Spartan Strong Class of ’20. Through the storm, they (the kids and the school) DID IT.

Also, watching the show reminded me how much I miss teaching high school and attending such events. Jacob Biener, my former student Adam Taylor dubbed you a rock star for making the assembly a reality, and he is quite correct.

I continued inching through my book stack. Reading 20 pages a piece of Yuri Herrera’s Transmigration of Bodies and João Ubaldo Ribeiro’s Sergeant Getulio felt like a major accomplishment, and those very engaging books are ones I could normally burn through in a day. By the way, the world fictionally presented in the former title resembles, too closely for comfort, our own, with its denizens either masked or striving to find one.

I spent the afternoon setting up my summer class’ Canvas site, shooing cats from between me and my computer monitor and keeping them from burning their fur on my trusty work candle. Anyone else have a work candle? Or work cats?

If you haven’t checked out Mrs. America and you’re able to, I ask you, why not?

Streaming for Shut-Ins:

I’m not sure this is a “full album,” but Brother Cliff, thank you for inspiring its posting here.