In the interests of fair play, I feel obliged to share that winter, of late, has been quite the radiant beauty. Now I know I have portrayed her in the past as a merciless bitch with a very sick sense of humor, but maybe she's been taking her meds? Perhaps e-harmony hooked her up with a sweet Carribean Breeze and she is in luhrve. Not sure, but it seems only fitting to say she is making a big effort here.

The mornings especially have been ethereal and other worldly.

Who ever knows? Chances are it's this beautiful everyday and it's me that doesn't tune in. However, this week has felt so. damn. good.

No wonder I see pink clouds.

Got Squam up and running and then last night got my Spring syllabus done, which of course was due last Monday, but hey! It's done now and I feel fine. Class begins next week and I have to share a bit of it as I'm deeply engaged with the material seeing as I developed and proposed this class. It draws from my core interests and I am curious to see how the students respond.

The class is called, UNDER THEIR SPELL: Fairy Tales.

This is the synopsis:

Eugene O'Neill said, "Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace." How many themes, archetypes, symbols, and imagery in our daily lives can be traced back to fairy tales? In this course, we will study the evolving history of fairy tales, beginning with the story of Amor and Psyche in Apuleius' the Golden Ass. We will consider several key stories and their variants, including Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Bluebeard, focusing in each case on the cultural and social contexts that helped shape them. Considering early versions of these tales by Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault, as well as feminist revisions by Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and A.S. Byatt students will begin to recognize their own dreams and disenchantments within a rich trajectory of responses to the magic doors that fairy tales have long held open before us.

Yum.

In other exciting news, check THIS out. Kee-RAY-zee, non?

So, though I know well enough the high tides and the low tides (most especially when we are at the whim of winter's moods) I am savoring a week of light and loveliness. It's particularly sweet seeing as it is the beginning of the new year.

Although I tried to come up with a word (I mean, please, me? Just ONE word? That's like asking a two-year old to play with only one toy-- it's never gonna happen), instead, I am totally copying what I saw Alex do and by totally copying I mean, totally copying. Not only am I choosing a living creature as my signature spirit totem for 2009, it must be the bee.

Industrious, happily occupied (come on! She's making honey, for chrissakes!), living in a very cool, modern, beautifully (and intelligently) designed home, engaged in meaningful work with others that produces, wait for it, HONEY.

What do you think, Daisy? Good decision?

UPDATED TO ADD: People! It IS the year of the BEE!! Look at this-- already I have had my name drawn from a blue saucepan (in a FRENCH kitchen) by a handsome, young, Frenchman named Fred who then proceeded to invent the bluepoppy dance. OMG.

It. Just. Doesn't. Get. Any. Better.

I wanted to post the video here, but blogger wouldn't let me (what a tool!). So if you want to see Fred do the bluepoppy dance (and pronounce bluepoppy with a lovely French accent) you must go here.

Un GRAND merci a Diary of Why. How lucky am I?

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