Harvard Square, Rain

I stopped a child from running into the street this afternoon. This is where things happen to a character in a novel, and then the afternoon comes and more things happen. Actually, it's fairly undisclosed that I was concerned about Donna being sick and in need of a new medicine and we were in Harvard Square, near Holyoke Gate waiting for transportation. A child about three years old came darting towards me toward Massachusetts Avenue. I moved a little to the left thinking I might need to block him, and then a little more to the left, and then right at the last minute near the curb, I bent down and put out my arm to stop him. What a mistake I never made. They are fast. (I waved to the child while leaving and was polite to the mother, who seemed bilingual, if not foreign and deferentially said thank you while leaving) I am waiting for the weekend for an online course from Harvard University I'm enrolled in, but don't foresee any on campus lectures or readings this month scheduled that may be open to the public there, at Boston University or at MIT for that matter, and from the schedule I've checked for the film theater at the Carpenter, there aren't any screenings of silent films that I need right away. We just happened to be on our way back to the apartment.

Donna's birthday, extended.

I'm not recommending the film. But as an alternative, if you are going to a theater, and happen to see it first run, it's comedy is understated.
We had postponed going out for Donna's birthday, watching movies on television as noted in my previous blog entires, and finally spent the evening with a pizza and a movie. On her actual birthday, because we have a wild rabbit in our courtyard, I brought her back a stuffed animal rabbit on impulse/instinct while running an errand- it was actually on the twelveth.
I was showing/explaining my quizzes to Donna, I have 100% on the midterm and 100% on the final of my online class on the Globalization of  Theater from LMU in Munich and 100% on my quiz from The University of Western Australia online on literature, for a total of 37 out of 37, but I just finished 100% for the quizzes on Film from Wesleyean, making it 57 out of 57. So it's now for fun. I get to pull out textbook jargon to add to my notebook, make sure I watch all the lectures, and then see if paying attention and reading comprehension covers the quiz. Then I went to the courtyard for a cigarette after midnight and my wild rabbit was there again in the shadows. There's a patch of exposed grass, but it hasn't reached it between the trees yet tonight (again, I am just mystified that we have a wild rabbit at night in the courtyard/quad and a hawk during the day that flies up to the nineteenth floor, if your from Boston, I can see the Hancock and Pru from here.)
I do have online poetry I can busy myself with- for some reason  Donna likes both the professor and Emily Dickinson, so I said that I would do everything to complete this round of it, particularly if the other courses are going well and all the better if I catch up with some of the courses I have looked through from the United Kingdom. So for now, Australian Literature Untill we begin Viking And Norse Sagas, with the Emily Dickinson to keep the pace and interest up and with scrambling dashes to some British courses I'm probably late for. PostScript It's now 64 out of 64 quiz questions; I did another lecture series on Australian Literature to tonight, after going out for another date for dinner. I'm 100% for two quizzes, now 14 out of 14 for Australian literature from The University of Western Australia.

Donna's birthday, little continued

Donna's Birthday continued

I realized this morning that not only do we have a wild rabbit in the courtyard, bordered by the train tracks, but we have had pigeons for the entire four years I have lived with her, owing to the fact that there are nineteen floors. Specificity! (Formerly known as Karma, if not serendipity) We actually were watching movies Untill sunrise on account of her birthday, and I am studying film and theater online, which takes up my time.

Donna's Birthday: awake early passing my online course on film

Donna's having breakfast in bed, almost in bed. I was awake early with my online course in film. I have enough of the quiz accomplished to get a certificate, but haven't finished the lectures- I left some questions unanswered and have 75% now! but have plenty of time for the 100%. I watched the silent film Docks of New York (Von Sternberg, 1928) with Betty Compson while she was sleeping.

Existential Postscript

The most miraculous thing- although Hume seems to believe that testimony is not enough proof of a miracle, by virtue of its nature, to where to be other than the miracle would be implausible- with the internet, eventually I'll find David Hume's original wording.

The blizzard of 2015 was the subject of publicity before during and after, but our luck with scheduling held to where we were just coming back through Harvard Square and it's onset and the parking ban. The lights stayed on and by the end of the week we were in Boston having lunch together while picked up a copy of Hamlet, which I'm studying online with the University of  Birmingham- learning the moment of the quote The time is out of joint" and the quote "The glass of fashion and the mold of form, the observed of all observers".

Last night, I went out to the courtyard- we are blanketed in snow- with a high wind- and the wild rabbit could be seen beneath a tree on the other side of the railroad tracks- that area has recently been used as an on location movie set if you've been glancing through the blog.
I mentioned that oddly there is one patch of grass in the courtyard quad and coincidentally it is exactly where the wild rabbit could be found for the last two-three months. You would have no way of knowing ahead of time that the snow can't drift into that area due to the height of one side, which is actually nineteen floors of the skyline, and the leg to of the other side. Tonight it is exactly where the wild rabbit returned to, without our knowing how he found it. The actual snowfall buried bicycles, parking meters and trash barrels. We also have a hawk that might be reappearing, this one seems white whereas the other was a red tail. All that's really of interest in walking distance is the Boston Museum Science.

I'm running behind, or out of time with poetry, but we covered The Poetic Principle by Edgar Allen Poe with the online course from Harvard University. But add to that A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which we are looking at for UPenn Poetry online.  If you liked the essay by Poe, by all means, read it with the essay by Shelley.

To be a poet is to apprehend the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation subsisting first between existence and perception, and secondly, between perception and expression...A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.