Hooray for my mom

My mother, an occupational health specialist at Hartford Hospital, is part of a fall-prevention team that just won a major award.

Here is a photo of the fall-prevention team receiving medals and certificates yesterday. My mama is the tiny cute one to the left of the woman in the green dress. I am so proud!

My mother also let me drag her to Concord, MA when I visited Connecticut last week. We toured Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived when she wrote Little Women, and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the Alcotts are buried on Author's Ridge near Hawthorne and his wife Sophia, Emerson and his wife Lidian, and the Thoreau family. CT was chilly, especially given temps close to 80 when I left Oklahoma, but the fall foliage was especially beautiful this year. Flying into Bradley, I looked out the window and saw gorgeous autumn colors on the trees lining the Connecticut River and thought, I'm home.

Why, you might ask, is there a PENCIL on Henry David Thoreau's grave? As one of my American Literature to 1865 students could tell you, it is because his family owned a pencil factory. Henry's sister Sophia ultimately ran the production, since he was busy being transcendental. I also learned from a student -- I make them give presentations on authors from the syllabus -- that Lidian Emerson's real name was Lydia, but that Ralph decided he wanted to call her Lidian and that was that. I guess he also called her by the nickname Queenie, and insisted that they name their daughter after his tubercular first wife, Ellen, who left him her fortune.

In other, unrelated news, it looks like I may be able to tag along on a study abroad trip in May. It's an eleven-day tour of historic sites in England, France, Belgium, and Germany. I would be an assistant student wrangler, but all major expenses are paid.