Alma Mater Times Two

What colleges have you attended?

Well, that’s a question with a lot of assumptions behind it. Who says all bloggers go to college? I’d have preferred something like, “Where did you get your education?” (From where?) I realize there are people would give flippant answers, like “the school of hard knocks,” but you’d also get interesting insights into folks with non-traditional paths.

I was VERY traditional. After four years of attending a large high school in suburban Ft Lauderdale, Florida (unfortunately named Plantation High School), I spent four years at a large state university. The years at the University of Florida had a lot of good parts. I learned a lot, screwed up my personal life irreparably, and thoroughly enjoyed living in my home town again. My studies focused on linguistics, Japanese, and cinema studies (my boyfriend’s major). I’m extremely grateful to the National Merit Scholarship system, which allowed me to attend college even though my family was not well off and my mother had many medical bills.

I then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate school. Fun fact: both the schools I attended have orange and blue as their school colors. At least gators add green to the mix. UI are the Fighting Illini, which I was shocked to discover pronounced the last two vowels like “eye,” not “ee.”

There I studied pragmatics, syntax, and semantics. I learned to write well and to teach adults. I loved teaching. Academic writing, not so much. My topic got really boring, which is why I’m not a professor right now.

My favorite thing on campus was the beautiful statue of Alma Mater welcoming students and graduates, by Lorado Taft. It was always a happy sight.

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If you’re still awake, I can give you my highlights of the day. First, I finished my giant three-part 2023 temperature blanket.

The last square is a handy key to the colors. I included the white, silver and purple that would have indicated 0° to 25° even though it never got that cold. Maybe this year! Or not! I could do without the Polar Vortex they keep threatening us with.

I’ll write up an official summary once I figure out how to get a photo of the whole thing.

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Daily Birds

Second, two birds made me happy today. One was the first bird Merlin heard, a yellow-bellied sapsucker. I think I’ve now recorded all the woodpeckers that live here.

When I lived in Illinois, we had a sweet gum tree in our back yard. Every year one of these little guys would come and drill a new row of holes in that tree. It was so much fun to watch it working away, and the holes were a wonderful remembrance.

The other bird that brought joy today has already been the Daily Bird, but I was excited to actually see the great horned owl today. Yes, that blob in the photograph was hooting.

I also enjoyed my sparrow buddies a lot. The Harris’s sparrows were singing and playing this afternoon. I hadn’t heard them in a few days. They fed in the trees next to me for a while, so I got good views, though obscured by branches. Here are some photos of them, the other sparrows, and cardinals in the brush and trees. Yes, it’s a brown world right now, but I like brown.