Cobwebs

I went outside and discovered a spider had built an extensive web across the rear entrance of my house, spanning the door, deck, and stairs. This is some sort of arachnoid commentary on human self-quarantine and it struck me as both sticky and humorous. (Zeugma!)

This venture into the horrible humidity was made in order to chip away at emptying my office, which I'm not-really-using, for sabbatical so that someone else can not-really-use it. (Everything is wonderful, the world is totally fine, don't look too closely.) My two most neglected plants stubbornly hang on in what is surely the most arid, frigid, inhospitable summer that southern Pennsylvania can artificially offer to indoor plant life. An enterprising indoor spider, hoping in vain to capture prey in the abandoned, sealed, locked building, had constructed a foolishly hopeful web from the ceiling down to the desk chair, completely blocking off the shelves and the keyboard. This struck me as sticky and a silly emerging theme.

Are spiders everywhere just constantly walling in everything, and only the entropy of weather and large fauna keeps pathways clear?

Given the prevalence of webs, the visible black cloud of mosquitos that chased me from my car back into my house seemed incongruous. YES, I had to pass through a partially-reconstructed deck-spanning web to reenter the house. NO, it did not appear to dissuade the accursed vampiric horrors. Please, can we get some mosquito-eating bats to colonize my block?

This post's theme word is durance (n), "confinement or restraint by force; imprisonment." In this grimdark modern fairytale, the protagonist is self-quarantined at home and entirely encased in cobwebs and loneliness so thick that the quarantine becomes permanent; "Dream Durance" is rated NC-17 for psychic damage inflicted on readers and anyone attempting to engage in concurrent political discourse.

Thank you class of 2020

'Tis the season where graduated seniors' student email accounts are turned off, so I am receiving a lot of "thank you and here's my future email address" notes. They are, overall, quite sweet --- it's nice to hear reflections from students on what they learned and how I was able to help them achieve their goals and work on interesting projects.

And.

Every once in a while...

... one of them really tickles me. Usually I just hang on to these and post them on the wall of my office, but since (1) physical notes, and (2) being in the office are both currently infeasible, it's going to be a blog post. Of course.

Judge this for yourself (which appears amid several very laudatory paragraphs):

Unlike most Math professors, you were not generous with hints, which forced me to question and correct myself repeatedly. The experience was not instantly satisfying, but I'm happy that I learned a lot and felt a sense of ownership by the end.

This an absolute gem. Every other sentence is direct, straightforward praise, and it rolls off my sincerity-repelling feathers like water off a duck. But these sentences? These, which could quite easily change in meaning depending on tone and delivery? These strike me to the core, make me so proud and happy, reassure me that the work I do is valuable, and are a pure expression of the goal I am always subtly angling towards: student independence.

Thank you, class of 2020, for sticking with it through this completely bizarre culmination of your college experience!


This post's theme word is hyponym (noun), "a more specific term in a general class." Students are great; hyponymically, the class of 2020 are excellent!