Day Diary June 4, 2025
Today opened alone, with my anxious, sleepless wife already up and listening to the news, something not really useful for calming an anxious mind. Still….
A morning Diet Coke and a bowl of peanuts while reading on my iPad. The New York Times, and when that gets too heavy my mind retreats to Facebook Marketplace, looking at things. This is a bad habit that I can’t seem to shake. “What can I get?” isn’t healthy. I’ve long loved antique malls and the random historical discoveries, so I suppose this is the same thing from the comfort of my own home, anytime I like. Still, it feels like a waste of time, or maybe it’s just a coping strategy and a distraction from the world.
This important work is interrupted by the arrival of power company tree trimmers back in my yard. I go out to investigate because they’ve already been here. They were looking for a particular pole with vines on it but then determined it’s not on my property. They are a Spanish-speaking crew. I worry for their safety in this country. One man I met last month was from Cuba. I would like to have known his story.
My day has nothing formal scheduled. I’m teaching online, asynchronously, so I check in here and there and see how they are doing. I’ll be thinking about existentialism and totalitarianism as two responses to the crisis of the First World War and beyond and helping students situate that in relation to our current political crisis. Super cheery.
I will mix that work with some personal art projects. I recently built a mini art gallery that I will place on posts by my sidewalk and have shows of my work and, I hope, others as well. Here are a couple of pictures. The inaugural show is work by my daughter who just graduated from high school:
Today is my sister-in-law’s birthday. She’s 14 years younger than me and I see her maybe once a year. I don’t know her very well. I send her a message and a gift of a workshop at a place where she’ll learn to grow plants commonly used in cocktails. Sounded fun.
Turns out it’s a two Diet Coke day. Very rare.
I turned back to the mini gallery project, attaching a base to the posts and some supports. So far, so good. Some neighbors came over to have a look-see. They had a flag pole taken down and were replacing it with a rose bush. Nice.
Around 10:30 I headed off to my college office to turn in a key. We are renovating the building and I got a tour of the new digs. Had to wear a hard hat. It was strange to be on a construction site. I have such respect for those folks. I could never do that well. I did get to thank them for making my new office and classrooms, so that was good.
I ran an errand to Target to pick up some prescriptions and a few groceries.
After some lunch I played some guitar and did some planning for the art show tomorrow night. It’s YART, a Muncie tradition where artists come together and sell their art. Nothing over $40. It looks like rain, so we’ll see how it goes. I do really enjoy doing these art shows. If the weather is ok I might bring the mini gallery. We’ll see.
I made a Spotify playlist based on an old homemade cd I made for some friends of my wife’s 24 years ago.
I finished water sealing the mini gallery and spray painted a stool.
My daughter started a new job this week at Baskin Robbins. She came home about 4:20 and told me about her day.
I started dinner around 6:00 after my wife returned from teaching yoga. We watched a new show called Stick and then a Danish show called The Secrets We Keep. Both seem promising in a low-key sort of way.
I turned to write some more in this diary when my daughter who’s away at college called to tell us about her day. She’s doing an internship with the Georgia Department of Health in Atlanta working on SIDS research. So proud.
Now, at 9:00, I’m about to call it a day.
I wish there was something more interesting to say. Part of this is the early summer blahs. I’m not in the classroom with students and I miss that energy and challenge. A month off from that is fine, but now it’s time to go back. I think the other part is the general unease that’s covering everything, like smoke from western wildfires that sometimes makes it this far. That unease is partly the political disintegration and corruption of this new Gilded Age. Part of it is being 58 and about to be an empty-nester. Part of it’s a longing to get out of here, a place I don’t like and have never felt I’ve belonged to. Part of it is the university I work for submitting to forces of hatred and knowing there’s little I can do about it. Part of it is just a general sense of waste and backwardness and a general cruelty everywhere. That’s not the whole truth or even the most truth, but it carries an outsized weight with me right now.