February 16, 2017, 12-2pm
Room 3317 at the Graduate Center

The Teaching and Learning Center and Futures Initiative invite all members of the Graduate Center community to bring lunch and reflect on their experiences teaching during the first two weeks of the new presidential administration, and to discuss teaching strategies for the weeks ahead. This informal gathering will provide an opportunity to share and reflect upon experiences in our classrooms, work through common challenges that have emerged under the new administration, connect with peers around potential projects, and stand in solidarity with one another. In these challenging times, let us find in one another a supportive community where we may develop strategies to balance the rigors of teaching with the specific concerns that affect our students and ourselves in this new administration.

Please fill out this form if you intend to join us so that we have a sense of how to set up the space: https://goo.gl/forms/ILXKiLXsvVifdtAk2.

“What Kind of Times Are These”

BY Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.