The Megastore recommends.

1. a rainy spring day. Okay, it would have been better if I had had a hat or a coat with a hood when it started lightly hailing as I walked briskly, then brisklier, from my car to the movie theater. But I maintain a rainy day makes the flowers really gleam. And it's not spring, in my opinion, if there aren't rainy gray days. Spring without rain is technically "summer," and I am not ready for that, and no matter what you think, you aren't either.

magpie

maple tree

tulips

2. two movie Saturdays. Nothing quite makes a Saturday feel like a Saturday than two movies. They could be in a row, as in you don't leave the theater, or they could be two separate movie dates, as occurred today. With my daughter and my grandson, I saw Mirror, Mirror, fully of vivid colors and gorgeous images. With the historian, I saw The Kid With the Bike,  heartrending and hopeful and French/(Belgian), an excellent combination. In between, I came home and read some of Half Empty  by David Rakoff for my book group. Perfect.

3. Scott Carrier. Last night at the faculty convention, Scott Carrier came to speak movingly about, well, a lot of things, but centering around and circling back to a story about becoming a teacher and shepherding one young Afghan man through a college education. So great. Middlebrow and another colleague recommended him, and it worked out splendidly. In an e-mail this morning, though, Middlebrow said that he probably wouldn't go to next year's convention because the committee would no doubt "over-correct with some self-help speaker." The gods forfend!



4. students who make things like this: (and this, and this, and this, and this...)





couplet