March (Mar. 31 '25)
I knew that if I stopped writing weeknotes and switched to posting whenever, I risked incredibly rare posts, and here we are, six weeks later. March was relentlessly busy, though, and, of course, I over extended and crashed pretty badly and got ill. And now I'm catching up and trying to be better about pacing myself. I need to get "PACE SELF" tattooed on my knuckles. (Although probably not given that tattoos are risky these days!)
March highlights include the usual mums' night, book group, and monthly brunch. Part of what I wanted to do this year was to get more involved locally, so I started volunteering with two groups and have met some good and interesting people through those. The town election is today, and I've been running my own mini get out the vote – reminding neighbors to register, telling them about candidates, etc. (My group chats are all hopping.)
We also went out a lot.
M and A both had weekday birthdays this month, and we did double celebrations for both – a small, family celebration on the actual birthday and something on the weekend. M wanted a party this year, so we had 18 sixth graders at a trampoline / laser tag / arcade place. I had a custom cake made for M. It was our first US birthday party for M, so there was a lot to figure out (venues, invitations, party favors, etc.), but M was thrilled with the party and the fuss.
We also went to the Boston Symphony and saw a spectacular show.
Our initial draw was Ray Chen, a violinist and social media star whose Instagram hooked M & me a while ago. He was fantastic, and so was the second half of the show. I loved the variety of the pieces – who knew Whitman could be set to music?? – and we met Dashon Burton afterward. So talented and so kind. M is going to remember that interaction forever.
The whole family also went to Vidyan Ravinthiran's book event at his local bookstore, which happens to be two towns over from us. His family was there, too, and it was fun to meet them. His new book Asian/Other is terrific – a mix of memoir and criticism – and the event was lovely and warm. He read briefly and then answered questions and chatted with the audience. Heather Treseler wrote a wonderful review of the book. I like reading Vidyan because we have so many sympathetic interests and entirely different brains.
For A's birthday, we spent an afternoon in Somerville going to Bronwyn's for lunch and then hitting the Bow Market Book Fair. We also had some celebrations and surprises at home. I haven't been crafting much lately (mostly because I haven't been home much!), but I made this tiny fox pin for A.
I had wanted to go to the Kweli Color of Children's Literature Conference again this year because it's always such a great experience, but I really couldn't manage a weekend away on top of everything else. And in mid-April, I'll co-present a paper at Boston DH: The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Critical Mapping in the Classroom. This is a project I've been working on for over a year now, and it'll be especially fun to get to present at the Boston Public Library.
I think to a certain extent I've been trying to personally counter program the barrage of bad news, which really isn't sustainable. But we need good things and strong connections to keep going, so I'll keep working towards that.
