back!

... and this emphatically not a Hawai'ian sunset, but one seen from the top of the Royal Street Parking Structure, after a long day's teaching - undergrad class on quilts in the morning, which failed to interest them at all. Two years ago, the topic was the stand-out popular favorite on my C19th US art and democracy course - a compelling argument about quilting as a cross-class, cross-ethnicity practice, with some contemporary stuff about the AIDS quilt and the Migrant Quilt Project thrown in; plus material about crazy quilts, and the anticipation of abstract art, and missionaries forcing quilt making on native Hawai'ians, and and and.  I think I'd have had a more lively class if I'd launched a discussion on scented versus unscented garbage bags.  Mid-terms, I suspect.  Then a three hour grad class on C19th Indian art/craft/design in my British Art and Empire course, where we ended up going down some fascinating rabbit holes (like what Australian exhibits were on show at the 1883-84 Calcutta International Exhibition - largely food and drink, it seemed, and a needlework portrait of Queen Victoria).  Then a meeting with a grad student.  So ... I was glad to get away before the sun actually sank.  Loudly croaking frogs in the rainforest seem a distant memory.