4 October 2021

Dear Everyone:

I know we’re conducting committee meetings and workshops and seminars and lectures in zoom rooms, but still it feels to me like the program is abuzz with activity some days, as if it were all being staged in person in 4406! Maybe I’ve become too integrated into zoom world (ack), or maybe it is some experience of the energy of in person work conveying across the ether because of the vitality you all bring to bear! Whatever the reason, Friday was that kind of day. The oral exam workshop Nancy Silverman organized and conducted, featuring Mario DiGangi, John Rufo, Eva Gordon Ryali, and Miranda Hajduk; the Faculty Membership Committee meeting; the seminar with one of our US Latinx candidates later in the afternoon, featuring Sharifa Hampton as respondent – just a little of so much going on! Thank you one and all — panelists, participants, organizers, attendees — and to Lily Iserson, our dedicated College Assistant, too, for the lively and enlivening engagement across the board!

This coming Friday’s forum promises to be terrifically engaging, too! Organized by Olivia Wood, the Portfolio Showcase centers work by students prepared for the portfolio (first) exam. This year, the showcase comprises work by Travis Bartley, T.K. Dalton, Eva Gordon Ryali, and Sandra Goldstein Lehnert. Come experience the wonderful range and texture of the work our students do! Please see the attached for information and a link to registration, or register directly here, with thanks to Lily for designing the flyer and setting up the meeting!

I hope the vitality you encounter in these kinds of spaces carries you through the more depleted times and encourage you all to make sure to reach out to connect perhaps especially when you’re not particularly feeling like you want to…an affordance of zoom life is surely the ability to be present in quiet form and be buoyed by others seemingly far removed.

In that spirit, and finally for today, just to note that I’ll be erratically on email this week as I’m attending to some family matters, so, extra apologies in advance for delays and seeming/being at a remove; I’ll do my best to keep up. I offer Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as my wish for you and me and us even though (or maybe because!) I can never listen to it without crying, because it’s an offering to acknowledge and help cushion the hard bits and imagine the other side!

Abundant well wishes, as ever –

Kandice