10 Things I Love To Do -- Part I

[Linking to The Simple Things]

Cat at The Whimsical Gardener (a lovely blog -- go visit!) joined my blog yesterday (thanks, Cat!) and when I went off to explore her site, I came across her "10 Things I Love to Do" post.  She invites others to write a similar post as a way of letting their readers get to know them better . . . so here goes, in no particular order, some appropriately illustrated with photographs:

 1.  I love to read; I started when I was four, and I have never stopped.  Because I've been an English professor for 30 years, and an English major before that, I can be a little picky about what I read, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy what my friend calls "bathtub books" (books it's okay to drop in the water while you're reading in the bath) -- they just have to be the right kinds of books.  I love "the classics" (though I certainly haven't read all of them), and I love mysteries (by James Lee Burke and John Lescroart especially).  I'm sure I'll talk more about books as time goes on.

2.  I love Shakespeare, reading, watching, reciting . . . .  In the picture above is a volume of Shakespeare that I picked up when I was about 12 and has never left me since; it has traveled from the Midwest to the East Coast, to the West Coast, and up and down California in the last 40 years.  I love everything about Shakespeare, and especially I love to teach it to students who are positive they hate Shakespeare . . . and then they find out that, really, they don't.  Surprise!

 3.  I love taking pictures.    No, this is not me, but some crazy guy I caught while out with a class at Bean Hollow.  The surf was incredibly high, and our teacher forbade us from going anywhere near the waterline, but this guy was not with our class and went right down there.  This picture encapsulates some of what I love about photography -- the "ah" moment, frozen in time, forever.  It's a thrill when something comes out right.

4.  While we're on that picture . . . I love being near the ocean.  I have lived within a mile or two of the ocean for the past 40 years, and at this point, I don't think I could live away from it.  I'm not the kind of person who hangs out on the beach, but I love driving or walking along the cliff, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, and knowing it's there, the "vasty deep" (1 Henry IV) that rolls on forever.

5.   I love having flowers in my garden, having them in my house, taking pictures of them (see tulips, above).  I don't know what it is about flowers -- yes, they're beautiful, they're fragrant, but it's more than that.  They bring happiness, whether they've been given to me or I've given them to myself.  My favorites:  lilacs, peonies, ranunculus, tulips.  Oh and dahlias, which I fervently hope are making their way to the surface of the garden this year, because last year, they didn't.  :(

This is clearly going to be a long post, so I'll stop here.  To be continued, on another day . . .