I just finished going through the page proofs of my forthcoming book on the artist Stephen Willats (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). The publication process for this book has taken a long time; I signed a contract in early 2017. While I have moved on from writing any more monographs on artists, I’m still compelled by aspects […]
Seeing Poorly. Feeling a Lot.
My eyesight has deteriorated in my sixties. Those times when I cut a thread with blunt scissors, it unwinds as I try to insert it into the eye of a needle. The needle has an eye and my eyes can barely see it. The thread bends and goes off to one side or the other […]
Panicky Pandemicky Thoughts
Embodied anxiety scatters my attention and makes my heart race; it takes a lot of concentration and determination to breathe into the anxiety and lessen my level of panic. Despite my angst I return again and again to online newspapers, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Zoom, Bluejeans, and FaceTime. Words I have said in the past […]
Walking Down a Black-and-White Road
My parents, my two older sisters and I lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, between 1960-1963. I was in third to fifth grades. During our years there, we marched in protest of segregated restaurants, movie theatres, and drugstores, boycotted segregated businesses, did voter registration drives, staged sit-ins, and were threatened by gun-wielding white men. The […]
Keeping Quiet
My father, Don Irish, died one year ago at age 97. He was not one to keep quiet or to stay still. Even so, this Pablo Neruda poem has me thinking about him, and how we might all benefit from not rushing around so much. The next-to-last verse below is especially compelling: It does seem […]
A Tribute to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
My father, Don Irish, died in April of 2017. For the last five years of his life, many of us helped him write his memoirs. We self-published the book in 2015. I share an excerpt here that seems particularly relevant to the harassment of untenured professors (often people of color) that is occurring across the country […]
Don Irish, Rest in Power
Donald Paul Irish, 97, died on April 14, 2017, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Don loved life: a deeply committed, intense, and energetic man, he joined countless causes for human betterment and fought despair in the face of many intractable forces. He put his body where his words were and he put his money where he […]
Gliding into the Unknown
The Swan, by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Edward Snow This heaviness, toiling on as if in bonds Through a landscape of things still undone, Is like the makeshift walking of the swan. And dying–to feel slowly giving way That ground on which we daily stand, Like his uneasy lowering of himself–: Into the water, […]
Joliet Wedding at the Henry Mansion
In July 2016, Renner Larson and Audrey Schlofner got married at the Jacob Henry Mansion in Joliet. I wrote up this long-ish version of the place where the event happened, for those who want more than the short insert in the program! So, who was Jacob Henry? Jacob Apgar Henry (1825-1908) made his substantial wealth […]
Stand. Point.
Poem written in January 2014, but still relevant. I can’t stand it. Standpoint: White woman feminist with Middle-class roots deep in the last century, I stand in silence. A gap Agape (Gr. Αγάπη) Not speaking because If I speak I harm those with whom I want to stand. White supremacy leaks toxins Into conversations, lectures, […]
