"in a coffin or on a plane"

Marlon James, in the NYT Magazine (March 10, 2015), on his first days in Minnesota, as a new instructor at Macalester College:

Seven days in, I put on jogging shoes and didn't stop running until I saw something I liked, the downtown Minneapolis skyline. For a man always fearing what people thought, I was suspicious of "Minnesota nice," everybody smiling and saying hello while they kept walking. But by the end of the first week, somebody I'd just met gave me a bicycle to get around; someone else bought me coffee mugs. Another professor, Casey, who moved here to teach as well, was into the band My Bloody Valentine and "Project Runway."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/magazine/from-jamaica-to-minnesota-to-myself.html

so glad of thy gladness

[Subject line from Swinburne's "March: An Ode," via Dawn Potter]

[Speaking of Ms. Potter, I read Galway Kinnell's "For Robert Frost" during lunch two days ago. It begins, "Why do you talk so much / Robert Frost?"]

There is paperwork that must be conquered, but the sun was shining, so there was snipping and lugging and sowing. Four cubic feet of garden soil (plus maybe another half-foot left over from the fall) doesn't go all that far, but it made for a solid start. I transplanted my mama Christmas pepper plant (the one that spawned these) and spice-jar tomato seedling into larger planters, and sowed the following:

Evergreen scallions (seeds from Hudson Valley Seed Library, via All Seasons)

Hungarian breadseed poppies (Renee's Garden, via [I think] the now-shuttered Worm's Way Nashville) -- I've never gotten these past seedling stage, but maybe third time + larger pot will translate into success

chives (Plantation Products quarter packet, via Nashville Public Library Seed Exchange)

Jade Gem lettuce (Renee's Garden, via Worm's Way St. Louis, source of the terrific tomato plants)

petite marigolds (Ferry-Morse, via NPL Seed Exchange)

Grand Rapids lettuce (Bean Acres Seeds, eBay)

Rainbow radishes (Seeds of Change, Turnip Truck)

arugula (Seeds of Change)

Dainty Marietta French marigolds (seeds harvested from last fall's blooms, which were from a 2013 eBay purchase)

Now I am chilling out with a tumbler of Pisco Capel and a library copy of Soul Food Love. I am boiling rice in chicken broth for the dog (who was trying her darnedest earlier to hoover up the soil that didn't make it into the pots), and later I will cook shrimp grits for the BYM.