Tuesday’s Tidings: August 10 2021

This week, I’ll be starting a new weekly post on Tuesdays. It’ll be brief, just an overview of what I’m up to, enjoying, and thinking about.

This week’s focus is settling in. We moved for Jonathan’s vicarage (like an internship) a couple of weeks ago. The boxes and whatnot are all unpacked (and have been for a while), but it’s still been a bit of an uphill battle trying to get to feeling settled in, normal, at home. I’m not surprised; stacking the end of grad school on top of a big move is a lot, especially when the end of my time as a graduate student was pretty hectic! So, this week is all about setting up old (or new) routines and getting more comfortable in this most recent stage of life. So far, so good; turns out Jonathan is right, and I do feel better if I get dressed first thing rather than sit around in my pajamas for most of the day!

Watching: we’re on our second watch-through of Inspector Lewis, a British detective show. I introduced Jonathan to the British mid-to-high-brow detective genre, and we’ve both really enjoyed it. It’s actually the spin-off of the classic Inspector Morse, which I highly recommend. Murders abound in the historic university town of Oxford, often in twined in a deep tapestry of art, culture, intrigue, secrets, and sin. Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox have fantastic on-screen chemistry, and the writing is fantastic. We just finished the first episode, which concerns a mysterious bacchanalian student group and a series of unusual killings.

Listening: I’ve been bouncing between a couple of things so far this week: Johnny Flynn and Handel’s Messiah, which I’ve never actually listened to before!! I enjoy Johnny Flynn’s combination of folksy rock and thoughtful, literary lyrics, and I discovered that a singer I really like, Benedikt Kristjánsson, was involved in a performance of Messiah. Both have been on rotation.

Reading: I’m working my way through Wendell Berry’s classic work, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. I read Berry’s Life is a Miracle in college and loved it, so I decided to read the book that put him on the map. So far, it’s really good. He is thoughtful and eloquent but down-to-earth and deeply realistic. The book is a critique of modern culture as much as of industrial agriculture, and it’s sometimes disorienting to consider that the book was written in the 1970s.

Looking Forward: This week, I’m looking forward to getting back to some neglected skills and hobbies. I’m hoping to start back up again doing some German and Latin, which I haven’t really had a chance to exercise since finishing up my MA thesis. I’m also trying to get back into doing more art, since I’ve got a good bit more time at my hands now. Hopefully that’ll translate to finally getting some permanent site art up, too, so stay tuned for that!

Closing Question: What’s something you’d like to do if you just had more time, even if it’s something small? Is there a way to make time to do it? I’ve been wanting to start painting again, so I’m trying to schedule some time throughout the week to do that.