Autumn days

We are enjoying yet another stunning autumn day here in the North of England - it’s cold but crisp, the light has a wonderful slightly honeyed clarity and the pavements are decorated with delicate origami shapes in an array of purple, yellow and dazzling red. For November 23rd this is highly irregular and I'd personally call it the best autumn in memory. The Forestry Commission predicted as much, back in August, when an unusually wet summer gave trees the opportunity to store plenty of sugars in their leaves. The following months have been almost uniformly dry, warm and still - no frosts to kill off the leaves, no water to turn them into mulch and very little wind to blow them away. The results have been breath taking. Autumn has always been my favourite time of year and the kids are used to me staring at the sky a lot and constantly stuffing fine specimens into my pockets to be pressed and displayed at home, but this year I've been insufferable. By rights it ought to be dark and damp and full-on SAD by now, but its almost December and the skylines are still dripping with  iridescent, flaming leaves.

Furthermore, I've just made a thrilling new discovery.

Why i have not been posting....

I have managed only one post in the last ten months. That makes me sad. While i would love to write a long post explaining why, i have only got time/energy to write a list of the things that have been getting in my way.

My favourite things that I taught this semester: Patricia Hill Collins

For my module about Feminist Philosophy I talked about an article by Patricia Hill Collins, 'Shifting the Center: Race, class and feminist theorizing about motherhood (1994). It is a beautifully written paper in which Collins, an African-American Feminist Scholar, describes the agonies involved in mothering children within a society which treats their ethnicity as inferior. I introduced the paper as a way to convey the force of what's known as the 'commonality problem' in defining the class 'women'. Here is the problem.

Leeds Leeds Leeds

I'm here!

We moved and we're all still alive. We've got two children that (mostly) sleep at night, a boy that likes his new room and his new preschool, a stay-at-home dad with three days of no deaths under his belt and a mama who can construct simple sentences. Result!!

Massive apologies to the millions of people who are waiting on an email from me about something. There has been no time. Hoping to get round to things once the desperate fight for air eases into some gentler treading of water.....maybe around June then.

In the meantime, I'm now at e.clarke@leeds.ac.uk

Good luck getting a response out of that.......