Cool Beans

Is it because I’m teaching The Waste Land this week or is it actual cruelty of our March (60 degrees on Monday and now, frigid and snowy)? Could it perhaps be the mountain of midterm grading? Or the plague that has felled my colleagues. Whatever the case may be, I have been feeling uninspired. In desperation, I turned from my blue books (which, this semester, were an appropriately sickly shade of pale green) to the web. Instead of my usual stops, I dug a little deeper (thanks to the extensive blogrolls of Michael Berube and Alas, A Blog) and found some places where I plan to spend more time:

Black Looks: this is a great African feminist blog that I can’t believe I haven’t found before. I’m enthusiastic and excited.
Cool Beans: Alas praised a post here and it was moving and led me to Yeah, but Houdini didn't have these hips which I fell in love with. It’s a funny phrase, but a terrible title. That said, it’s a great blog on being a feminist mom: another one I can’t believe I haven’t found before.
You Cried for Night and Out of the Woods Now: these are becoming more regular stops for reading about books and everything else.

So, some new stops and some online companionship. It’s amazing to me how the blogs I like best have really mastered something about voice: some of them make me immediately want to befriend their writers and I become, in my imagination, a gushing fan.