Hello friends!
After two months of three-digit temps and no rain at all, the weather has finally broken here in central Texas. Still warmer than I'd like — I have a lot of Mr. Autumn Man in me — but hey, I'll take it, with gratitude.
The new plan for online writing I announced last month is working great, for me anyway. My micro.blog page is now firmly established as the one-stop shop for my readers. I post there all the fun things that at one time would've gone into my Snakes & Ladders newsletter, and link to everything I publish elsewhere, whether on my own old blog or other sites. And, of course, you may subscribe to it in newsletter form. This new procedure has really simplified my life at a time when I need simplification.
A new semester is in high gear and I have two wonderful groups of students. That keeps me pretty busy, but I am
preparing my critical edition of Auden's The Shield of Achilles for publication;
working on a long essay for Harper's, topic (for now) top secret;
continuing to make notes an plans for my book on Terrence Malick's films.
That third project also has me watching many movies, especially ones that might have played a role in shaping Malick's cinematic vocabulary — though he is so utterly distinctive a filmmaker, with so personal a visual and storytelling style, that he's not very much like anyone else. Still, it's fun to educate myself, and in the coming months my blog will probably have more posts on movies than on anything else.
Thank you all for your support — it really means a a lot, and in more than one way. It gives me confidence to keep going along my oddball path of thinking and writing, and it makes it less important for me to try to place my writing in publications that pay. I like getting paid, but not as much as I like free intellectual exploration, and the more support I get for this bloody writing, the more free intellectual exploration I get to do. So, again: thanks!
Oh, and: Angus sends his thanks too.
