20 September 2021

Dear Everyone:

This week is Chuseok, the Korean holiday to give thanks for bountiful harvest and gather hope for the year to come. Color and food (and colorful food) shared with beloveds, it’s a favorite holiday of mine. I will think distinctly and deliberately of you all with gratitude and hope in celebrating this week.

Speaking of hope, this coming Friday, 4p, we’ll be holding our program open house for prospective applicants/students. What could be more forward-looking than this?! Siraj Ahmed has put together a program featuring Alessandra Occhiolini, Zoë Hu, Mitchell Wilson, Amy Wan, Duncan Faherty, and Nancy Silverman, that is sure to be helpful to anyone interested in doctoral studies, and whether their interest is in our program or more general, they are most welcome. The link to register is here, and a flyer version is attached — please feel free to circulate widely!

I’ll close this week’s brief message by offering particular thanks to those who provided cover for me last week as I moved through some family health emergencies. It seems personally appropriate to me that Chuseok is this week, as I feel this immense appreciation for the assistance so gladly given – and I know so many of you would do and have done the same, and not just for me. Over these past 18 months (and counting), I know it’s at times been difficult to feel/be thankful; fury seems more regularly the right response. Yet and still, for me anyway, intentional gratitude has helped hold things together – perhaps it’s possible to be furiously grateful? In any event, an invitation to share in celebrating thankfulness this week! I know it’s goofy; I don’t care – an affordance of getting older, for which I am, indeed, grateful…

Abundant well wishes – and for abundance!

Kandice