1. Since I last posted about my hair, it has gone from 2A waves to 2B-2C waves/curls. This is so wild.

I went to the hairdresser on Tuesday and got a lot of the length cut off and some waves put in to support the curls and OMG it is so curly now. It's very curly at the roots/crown with lots of genuine ringlets and curls/waves on the sides. It's less so in the back, but my stylist says that since the roots are curly all over, she expects that it will continue to get curlier everywhere over the next couple years. She predicts I am headed for genuine 3A-C hair in the near future.

I am having so much fun playing around with my new curly hair. I finally have a diffuser, so I had a go at styling it myself with heat yesterday, and I think I did alright. I need a stronger hold styling gel which I am picking up today, and then I will have all my curly girl accessories and accoutrement. It's just going to take practice. My stylist was so proud of me, though. She said I was very informed and had done my research and had my facts about how to care for and style my new hair correct. I told her I only know how to do one thing and that's research. LOL

I'm still just in shock that this could even be a thing that happens. So wild.

2. My summer class is over, and it was truly a joy. Poets of color often get left out of courses about nature poetry, so it was important to me that the course included them. One of the poets I included that was new to me is LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs. We read her poem My First Black Nature Poem, which is about the struggle to have positive interactions with nature (in this case, natural bodies of water) when it's the site of generational trauma. The poem references Goree, Senegal, the largest hub of Atlantic slave trading from the 15th-19th centuries, and Lake Champlain, which was part of the route of the Underground Railroad. It evokes the practice of drowning black towns to form lakes (like Lake Lanier in GA), and although the poem suggests that African Americans prefer swimming in pools to swimming in natural bodies of water, it evokes the legacy of racism that prevented them access to public pools after desegregation. Many towns closed public pools or turned the public pool into the country club pool to avoid having to allow African Americans to swim with white people. This happened in the town I live in. There's still not a public swimming pool. This has had serious consequences for public safety in that African Americans are still less likely to know how to swim than white people because of historic lack of access to places to learn how to swim.

3. The graduate class I am constructing is going to be really good I think. I feel so much pressure and responsibility for this class to be good because I didn't get any proper instruction about teaching in graduate school, and I think about how much easier my first years of teaching would have gone if I had. I think once the headache and tedium of constructing the class are over, I am going to be very proud of it. I hope to be finished with it this weekend. *crosses fingers*

I think teaching it will be truly delightful, and I'll be posting about it as I teach it.