Took a dawn walk this Sunday morning to see what the snow that fell all day yesterday—10 hours or so of flurries—would look like from behind the camera’s lens. Here are a few of the dawn shots. One is indoors, as you can see: our miraculous “Christmas” cactus, which came from Jane’s mom Ellie just before she passed away. It sits atop a porcelain white elephant in what turns out to be the perfect partly sunny spot in our dining room—perfect, we assume, of course: it flowers twice a year, once at Hanukkah and once again at Passover, two moments of our years, back then, when Ellie and Bob would be joining us at the big table in that room. It’s Ellie’s spirit-plant.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. He is currently writing a book on the art & avant-garde of 1960. He has taught a massive open online course, "
Founder/Faculty Director, 